The Heir of Alexander
by Lucinda M. H. Cheshir
Summary: The sequel to my previous fan-fic: The Red Sun of Madrid. Half demon, half djinn, Azazel Teer is back, and ready to cause some more trouble for Holly and Cas, and perhaps set into motion even more sinister plans than the two friends had originally thought. Disclaimer: I own nothing except my OC's, of which there are many in this one. Read & review- gratias ipsum! FINISHED finally
1. Prologue: Alexander's Fanboy

Prologue: Alexander's Fan-boy

Henry Peters, a young American historian, considered himself very lucky to be staying in Alexandria for his vacation. Well, it was, in his opinion, going to end up being more of a working vacation.

He had come to Alexandria, the Pearl of the Mediterranean, for the first time that winter in hopes of learning more about his hero, Alexander the Great. Possibly even something that no one else had ever found. It was ambitious of Henry, but for now he would settle simply for studying Alexander, and Alexandria.

The Great Library of old was now in ruins, as was the Great Lighthouse, but Henry visited the sites of the buildings anyway, hoping against hope that he might receive some clue to an unsolved mystery, like the novels Henry read in his free time.

The sun was just setting over the horizon when Henry came to the very oldest part of the city. He almost tripped over a stone that was jutting out strangely from the ancient road, and would have simply continued, if he hadn't noticed some odd, shining red hieroglyphics near the bottom of a half-ruined, mud brick wall. Intrigued, Henry fell to one knee for a closer look. Immediately, he recognized the hieroglyphs for "Alexander," and took out his pocket notebook to copy down the strange, almost magical writing.

He would translate the glyphs the first opportunity tomorrow, Henry decided. Little did he know that he wouldn't get that opportunity at all.

"I wondered how long it would take you to find it," came a harsh, English-accented voice from directly behind Henry. Henry rose and turned quickly to see who had observed his marvelous find, and was met with the sight of a blond-haired teenage boy with cold green eyes, and an older-looking, but also blond-haired woman whose dark eyes glittered with absolute malice.

"I haven't been so pleased since I heard that my fool brother Iblis had been dismembered by tigers." the woman commented, and the boy nodded in agreement.

"Indeed. Now, Mr. Peters, it'd save me quite a bit of unnecessary trouble if you just gave me those glyphs that you copied down, but I doubt that you'll just give over like that. You mundanes never work like that, do you?"

Henry had no idea who these two English folk thought they were, but the shining red hieroglyphics were Henry's find, and there was absolutely no way that he'd let his notebook out his sight.

"Leave me alone!" Henry shouted, hoping that a police officer would perhaps hear him, but this hope was in vain. The boy rolled his eyes and sighed, seeming exasperated, but not the least bit surprised. Henry backed away, until, with horror, he found that he had backed into the mud-brick wall.

"Mother? If you would be so kind as to, ah, _persuade _Mr. Peters? Yes, thank you."

The boy's mother nodded and, in less time than it took for him to blink, she was holding a very sharp, black-bladed knife against Henry's throat.

"Okay, okay! Take it!" Henry whispered, deciding that his precious notes were not as important as his life, and threw the little book down onto the dusty path at the boy's feet.

"Thank you, Mr. Peters." The boy smiled sinisterly, and the woman retreated, sheathing her knife.

"Now then," she said, turning to her son, "I think a Methuselah would be adequate, don't you, son?"

The boy nodded, and stooped to collect Henry's notebook.

"Yes, mother. That's a very good idea. I'll do it, shall I?" And, pausing to grin horribly at Henry, the boy finished with a single, rather strange word. "MACKINTOSH." he said, and Henry began to run.


	2. Chapter 1: Waking Reflections

Chapter 1: Waking Reflections

Holly Godwin awoke in a cold sweat. She had no doubt that the string of seemingly random images was a message intended for her. Holly was both a djinn and a prophet, and this combination of talents made some other djinn in London hesitant to talk to her, for fear that Holly might have seen the skeletons that they kept in their closets. Of course, the visions and prophesies that Holly received were nothing so trivial.  
Holly blinked a couple more times and sat up, yawning and stretching. Then, still feeling tired, she fell back on her pillows and stared at the mural that had been painted on her ceiling.

As she stared at the painted starry sky, a scene that was so realistic that Holly felt as though it were still around midnight, she reflected on the adventure she'd had last summer. Holly dearly wanted to go on another adventure, but with her djinn father, Nimrod, being so insistent about giving Holly and her best friend, Cas Malone, a good education, they had all remained in London since September. Holly had lost count of the number of books she'd read, mostly on Nimrod's pushing, but Cas kept a careful list, which was now about 1153 books long. Nothing stopped Cas from reading when he could.

Holly's mind wandered from Cas to Cas's evil elder brother, Azazel Teer. Azazel had tried to incinerate all of Europe last Summer, and it was only because of Holly calling upon Gabriel the archangel that the millions of people who lived on the European continent were still alive. Holly wondered why she'd had a vision of Azazel, what it all meant. Was Azazel hatching a new plan? Had he already hatched a new plan, and was now implementing it? Holly couldn't say.

Her thoughts were interrupted by her older brother Mark, hammering loudly on her door. "Time to get up, kiddo!" he shouted at her. Holly groaned. Mark was her brother, and she loved him, but sometimes it seemed as though he could be the most annoying person on Earth.

"Yeah, I'm coming." She mumbled in reply. For all of her deep thinking, Holly was still very tired.

"I'm sure you are, Holly. Don't forget to wear your hijab!" Holly groaned again. Mark was getting more and more insistent about Holly 'conforming to the Muslim dress code,' as he put it. Before they had come to live with Nimrod in London, Mark had rarely insisted that Holly do anything, but now he was more bossy than ever. It seemed, to Holly, that her brother was being entirely too protective of her. It may have been that Mark had been rattled by the danger Holly had been placed in last summer, but all the same, Holly hadn't given up fighting Mark's edict.

After she heard Mark make his way, noisily, down the old wooden staircase down the hall, Holly got dressed, as she usually did, very purposefully leaving her favourite red paisley print hijab draped across the back of a chair, but putting on her sleeve-guards. She braided her hair, which had grown several inches (with the help of some djinn power,) and wandered downstairs to the kitchen where Mark and Mr. Groanin, Nimrod's butler, were already busy cooking breakfast.

"What are you making?" Holly asked, trying to look past her brother at whatever was in the frying pan. Mark turned around, and cursed something in Arabic, probably the only curse he knew.

"Didn't I tell you to wear your hijab?" He asked Holly, rather crossly. "Now, go back upstairs and put one of them on, or I promise you, you're not getting fed!"

Holly rolled her eyes. "We have this argument every morning, brother mine. I don't see the point of it anymore!"

"Yeah, neither do I. Especially since I always win. Now, upstairs, and when you come back down, you need to have your hijab on. Go on, scram!" Mark brandished a steel spatula at her, and Holly rolled her eyes again, but went back upstairs to do as he bade her to.

On the stairs, Holly almost ran into Nimrod.

"Good morning, my child," Nimrod greeted Holly with a smile. Then he noticed her less-than-pleased demeanor. "I take it that Mark is threatening to starve you again, is he?"

Holly nodded darkly. "He's just lucky that it's winter. If he tries to make me wear that thing in the summertime..." Holly didn't finish her thought, but sighed, and gave her father a good-morning hug. "I can't do anything about it now, though. So I guess I ought to do as he says until I can make him change his mind. I don't know what his deal is, though! It's just irritating!"

Nimrod patted her consolingly on the back. "You're growing up, Holly. Mark just wants what's best for you. You're really all that he's got to hold on to now."

Holly heaved a sigh. "As usual, you're right, dad. Anyway, have you seen Cas? Or is he oversleeping again?" Nimrod shrugged, and allowed Holly to continue up the stairs and to her room.

Fixing her hair and putting on the hijab was a matter of a couple minutes, and on her way back down to breakfast, Holly banged loudly on her best friend's bedroom door.

"Wake up, Cas!" she shouted, and a replying grunt came from the other side. "We're not going to wait on you again, y'know!"

"Yeah, I know. Just a minute." Cas was as good as his word, and about a minute later, he appeared at his door, looking disheveled, and otherwise exhausted.

"You were up reading again, weren't you?" Holly smiled. Cas yawned and nodded, straightening his t-shirt.

"Yup. That's what Gabriel told me to do, after all. You can't just ignore an order given to you by an archangel, you know." Cas yawned again.

Holly punched him playfully on the shoulder. "Come on, then. Mark and Groanin are already making breakfast, and I just passed Nimrod on the stairs, so up and at 'em, best bud!" Holly dragged Cas down the staircase and to the dining room, where Nimrod was already seated, waiting for them.

"Mark says that they're almost done in the kitchen. And he'll be quite pleased to see that you've decided to wear your hijab, Holly." he said, smiling and puffing away at a cigar, as he usually was. Holly and Cas, being djinn, didn't mind the smoke the cigar generated; indeed, they were grateful for it, the weather outside being quite unusually cold, even for London. Nimrod smiled as he watched the two young djinn inhale some of the smoke. "I don't know if I ever told you this, but smoking is actually good for djinn. It's terribly bad for mundanes, of course, but we're finally beginning to get the point across that they can't do everything we can." Nimrod blew a smoke ring that was, unusually for him, actually shaped like a smoke ring. He quickly blew another, slightly smaller ring, and sent it through the middle of the first before it dissipated. Holly and Cas smiled at Nimrod's trick, and not two seconds later, Mark and Groanin came through the kitchen door with the food.

By now, Holly, Cas, and Mark had all become quite accustomed to the food, and very much preferred it over the high-preservative American food they had been eating for the past years. They finished off the meal fairly quickly, which was saying something, as Mark and Groanin had cooked quite a bit of food.

Nimrod sat back in his seat and lit another cigar. "Well," he began amiably, as though he were about to announce some great treat for them all. "I have some news for you all. We're headed to Egypt tonight."

Cas, who had just taken a sip of orange juice, nearly spit it out in surprise, but restrained himself when Holly gave him a cold stare.

"Don't. You. Dare." she said, making each word sound deadly, and Cas eventually was able to force himself to swallow the orange juice. Satisfied that her best friend was no longer about to spray his orange juice all over her, Holly turned back to Nimrod primly. "Where in Egypt are we going?" she asked, very politely.

Nimrod, who seemed not to notice Cas's predicament, answered with a question. "Do you know who Ptolemy is, Holly?" He asked, smiling. Slowly, Holly nodded. "Then you ought to know where we're headed." Holly and Cas processed this for a moment, before Cas finally came up with the answer.

"Alexandria? Awesome!" He shouted. This shout earned him a disapproving glance from Mark, who otherwise said nothing. Holly suspected that Mark had known of this plan all along, and had not told either Holly or Cas anything. Holly had to admit, Mark could be a pretty good actor when he put his mind to it.

"You have the whole day ahead of you to pack," Nimrod told them. "The plane leaves at 21:30." Cas leapt up from the table.

"All right!" he said, putting on a great show of enthusiasm, and dashed away upstairs to begin. Holly, by contrast, was somewhat more suspicious of Nimrod's motives for taking them to Alexandria. It had to do with her vision from the previous night. Somehow, she felt that Mr. Peters' dilemma had something to do with the man who had founded Alexandria over two thousand years before.

"Why are we going to Alexandria?" she asked. Nimrod tried to look innocent.

"Oh, no reason in particular. You and Cas just seemed to take so well to Egypt the last time that we were there, that I thought I'd show you two an even more fascinating and wonderful city than Cairo." Nimrod told his daughter. She immediately was able to tell that this was not the truth. At least, not the whole truth.

"That's great," she said. "I guess. I just thought that it _might_ have something to do with Azazel. Guess I was wrong." Holly stood up, gathered her dishes, and took them into the kitchen, leaving Nimrod and Mark behind to talk without her there to listen.


	3. Chapter 2: Doing Dishes

Chapter 2: Doing Dishes

Cas was about to reenter the dining room, having remembered almost as soon as he'd gotten upstairs, that he had dishes to clean up. However, just as he reached the doorway, he stopped in his tracks. Nimrod and Mark were discussing something in low tones, and instinct dictated that Cas stop and listen in.

"You don't think that she knows, do you?" Mark asked Nimrod.

"I have no idea. She could have had any number of visions. There's no telling what Gabriel has sent to her by now." Nimrod replied.

"About Azazel? There must have been a reason she did- I think that she knows something that she's not letting on." Mark was frowning, Cas could just tell.

"Perhaps, but if you recall what I told you earlier about angels, they don't exactly give a straightforward answer when you need one." Cas heard Nimrod stand up and begin pacing. "I'm not entirely sure if we should or should not tell her, to speak the truth. Bottle me, but it's perplexing. On the one hand, we've got no idea where in Egypt Azazel actually is, but on the other hand, Holly might have an idea."

It was now, at the most inopportune time that Cas could imagine, that he had to sneeze. Explosively.

"Cas, come on out." Nimrod sighed, and reluctantly, Cas complied.

"How much did you hear?" Mark asked. He was still seated at the table, the remnants of breakfast still present there.

"Not much," Cas admitted. "Why are we going to Alexandria, anyway?"

"It's not so much that we're staying in Alexandria. I've received reports from all over Egypt about Azazel, so I'm just taking a shot in the dark going to Alexandria. I have no way to tell if any of these leads on Azazel are simply red herrings or the real deal." Nimrod explained. "Please don't tell Holly. If Azazel does want revenge on you both, he'll most certainly have a greater grudge against Holly. She was the one who summoned Gabriel, after all, as well as the one who broke his ring of Hellfire."

"What's the point of not telling Hol? I mean, she'll probably just find out for herself later, and she'll probably be really angry that we kept this from her." Cas was quite confused. Having woken up only about half an hour before, Cas felt that his brain wasn't quite working at its full speed.

"She already suspects, you're right, Cas, but what she doesn't know can't hurt her." Mark told Cas.

"So why are you telling me?" Cas asked.

Nimrod sighed again. "Because, Cas, you ought to know everything we do about your brother. He is your family, after all. Even though we are doing all we can to frustrate his plans."

"But Hol's a prophet. Couldn't she have something important to contribute?"

Mark shook his head firmly. "Asking Holly to tell us about the future would put us all in danger. Don't you know how these prophecies work? If you hear them before you're supposed to, you spend all your time trying to stop it from happening."

"But doesn't that usually end up making the prophecy come true?" Cas squinted at Mark, searching for some sort of response. Mark only shrugged.

"That doesn't matter. I don't want my little sister hurt because I told her something I shouldn't have." he said. Cas shook his head doubtfully. Mark took on a new look, one of complete sternness. "Don't you dare tell her. If anyone's going to say anything, it's going to be me, got it? If she asks, tell her that Nimrod and I were discussing how excited I am that we're flying first class, okay?"

Cas sighed, and gathered up the remaining dishes, and took them into the kitchen. "I'll do the rest of the dishes." he said. Nimrod nodded amiably.

"Thank you very much, Cas." he said, as Cas walked through the door to the kitchen.

Holly was standing by the sink, drying her dishes with a dishtowel. She let out a derisive snort when she saw Cas laden with the remaining three quarters worth of plates, glasses, and silverware.

"You're washing those." she told him, her eyebrows raised.

"Okay," Cas replied, hoping that Holly might tell him what she seemed to be hiding. He turned on the tap, and filled the sink with scalding water. For a normal mundane, like Mark or Groanin, this water would have been unbearable to be in contact with for more than about ten seconds, but Cas, being a djinn, could plunge, bare-handed into the hot water without any discomfort whatsoever.

"So, what were they talking about out there?" Holly asked, trying to see if Cas actually knew.

Cas shrugged, trying to seem convincing. "Mark's apparently really excited to be flying on first class again. Apparently it was his favourite part about last summer."

Holly laughed. "I can hardly blame him, what with both of our lives being constantly threatened." she said, noting that Cas seemed to be hiding something, in much the same way that her father and elder brother were.

Cas poured some dish soap into the rapidly filling sink, and turned to face his friend head-on. "What's the connection between my evil brother and Alexandria?" he asked quietly, hoping that neither Nimrod nor Mark heard him.

Holly shrugged. "Is there a connection? I dunno, Cas." Without really asking, Holly sent out a deal to Cas: tell her what Nimrod and Mark had been discussing, and she'd tell Cas what she knew.

"That's what they were talking about out there." Cas whispered, turning back to the sink and turning off the tap.

"Really? How interesting. All right, last night I had a vision. It wasn't just a dream, mind you, I'm absolutely sure it was a vision. Something to do with some magic hieroglyphs, which for some reason Azzy couldn't see." Holly went quiet, thinking hard about something. "Do you know what a Methuselah is, Cas?" Holly asked.

Cas finished scouring the first plate and gave it to Holly for her to dry off. "A binding, perhaps? Old Azzy was pretty fond of putting me under bindings. The only ones he used were a sesquipedalian, a djinnhibitor, and a quaesitor." Cas shuddered at the recollection of the quaesitor. "I hate beetles." he said, and

Holly smiled. She had no idea what would come out of her mouth if she was put under a quaesitor binding, but she knew that she didn't want to find out.

"I suppose we ought to ask Nimrod about it, shouldn't we?" Holly took finished drying the first plate, and took the second.

"Yeah, I guess so. Just don't tell them that I told you what they were talking about. They told me not to." Cas sighed. "You should go and pack. I can finish the dishes on my own."

"Don't be silly. Packing takes all of ten minutes, I can do it later. We've got all morning and all afternoon." Holly carefully placed the plate on the pile she had begun.

Cas changed the subject. "Do you think that Nimrod will teach us more about our powers while we're in Egypt? I mean, it _is_Egypt. It's nice and hot down there. Lots of desert."

Holly nodded. "I almost can't remember the last time I felt really warm."

Mark backed into the kitchen, nodding and finishing a sentence.

"...That was pretty long ago, though Nimrod, you have to admit that much." Mark turned around, saw Holly and Cas listening intently to the conversation, and immediately shut his trap.

"Hello, brother mine." Holly said, not bothering to disguise her look of intense curiosity. "I hear you're looking forward to the plane trip, aren't you?"

Mark looked slightly guilty, but nodded nevertheless. "Uh, yeah. Go and pack, kiddo. You too, Cas. You've done enough, I'll take over."

Cas shrugged, and took the dishtowel from Holly to dry his hands and arms off. Mark rolled up his sleeves and plunged both hands deep into the water. He yelped, and immediately withdrew them.

"Oh, yeah. I ought to have told you it's a bit hot." Cas said mildly.

Mark's hands and forearms were red. "A bit hot?" He said, staring at Cas. "I know you're made of fire, Cas, but _a bit hot_? It's incandescent!"

Holly smirked. "Hot water is best for scouring, Mark. Be a man about it." Mark scowled at his little sister, clearly conveying that he was not in the least amused by her witty comment. Cas concealed a smile. It had given him much amusement to observe Holly's and Mark's constant conflict over the past few months. The siblings' banter somehow made him see exactly what he had missed by being an only child for all of his life, at least, his life before he discovered that he was a djinn.

Holly pushed her brother gently and laughed good-naturedly.

"Nice, Hol." Cas said. "Real nice. I'm going to go and start packing now."

Holly nodded. "Yeah, guess I will, too. Have fun with the hot lava, Mark." She stalked out of the kitchen, and Cas followed close behind.

"Hey, Hol,' he said, a grin beginning to spread across his tan face, "what say you to a little footrace up the staircase?"

Holly arched an eyebrow. "Only if you're ready and willing to lose big-time, Cas." Cas laughed.

"Not on your life, Hol! Okay, on your mark, get set, GO!"


	4. Chapter 3: A Bad Omen

Chapter 3: A Bad Omen

At precisely 20:43 that evening, Holly dragged her big red suitcase down the staircase, bouncing it noisily on each step. She had been incredibly excited all day, but now, roughly 45 minutes before the plane was due to depart from London's Heathrow airport, Holly was beginning to develop some doubts about spending an extended period of time in an airplane. Holly had discovered last summer that an airplane was the perfect combination of the two things she feared most: small spaces and heights. While she still dreadfully wanted to go back to Egypt, Holly almost couldn't imagine being stuck in one of the horrid machines again. She much preferred traveling by whirlwind, even if her acrophobia went wild, her intense claustrophobia would not.

"Are you all packed?" Mark asked his little sister. Holly looked back at her suitcase, nodded, and went to fetch her red fox-fur coat, which had been a gift to her from Nimrod, for the bitter London winter.

"Yep, I sure am, bro. Why?" Holly replied, arching one eyebrow, an ability that had taken her months to master properly.

"Even your hijabs?" Mark asked, his deadly tone implying, quite clearly, that if Holly had 'forgotten' them, she would be in some very serious trouble.  
Holly rolled her eyes. "Yes, Mark," she sighed, "Everything's all packed."

Mark backed off and nodded. "Okeydokey, then." he said, and Holly smirked.

She was just about to ask why Nimrod wasn't there, when a black taxi cab pulled up out front, and the cabbie honked his horn. From his library, Nimrod appeared, effervescent as ever, but seeming a little disappointed. The cause of this disappointment was soon evident, when Mr. Groanin followed Nimrod and made an announcement.

"Right, I hope that you all enjoy Egypt, though I can't for the life of me imagine why you would do such a thing, but I'm on holiday. I'll be heading to Bumby in another quarter-hour. Goodbye."

Holly couldn't believe it. She had come to like Groanin very much, and couldn't imagine going on holiday to Egypt without his eternal moaning and groaning. "But why, Mr. Groanin?" she asked.

"Why? I'll tell you why, young lass. It's my holiday, and I'm headed for Bumby, that's why." Groanin explained matter-of-factly.

Nimrod shook his head sadly. "I'm sure I don't know why you've decided to go on holiday now, Groanin. We were going to have such great times in Alexandria."

Groanin shrugged, and put his bowler hat on. "I'd rather take my holiday now than later, sir. I'm much obliged to you, of course, but you had all better be off now, or you'll miss your airplane."

"Enjoy your holiday, Groanin." Mark shook hands with Mr. Groanin, and Holly and Cas followed suit.

"We'll miss you," said Cas, and Groanin nodded appreciatively.

"Well, come along, everyone." Nimrod shepherded Holly, Mark, and Cas out the front door, to where the cabbie was waiting impatiently.

The ride in the taxicab was mercifully short. Both Holly and Cas thought that they very probably would have begun to really panic if they had been stuck in there for much longer.

Holly never could remember exactly what happened after that. She supposed that they must have gotten on the plane, and that she must have taken a charcoal pill, but the next thing Holly could remember was falling asleep with Mark sitting next to her, saying how nice first class was in comparison to the cramped economy class.

* * *

As usual, Holly had a dream when she fell asleep, cushioned by the plush armchair-like airplane seat she was seated in. And of course, Holly's dream wasn't just a dream, but a vision that she had to pay very close attention to.

It began with the distinct impression that Holly was falling very quickly through complete darkness. Holly saw a tiny pinprick of light below her appear, and grow larger and larger until... Holly landed on a dusty road, almost collapsing from the force of her impact, and blinking in the bright midday Egyptian sun.

"Hello?" a quavering voice called. Holly turned to see a bent old man staring directly at her. "Who are you, girl?"

Holly pointed at herself, and the man nodded shakily. "I'm Holly." she said, squinting at him. There was something almost familiar about this old man, something that she couldn't quite place that reminded her of someone else.

"You sound American, not Egyptian. What are you doing in this part of Alexandria?" the man, who sounded very American himself, coughed eloquently, suggesting ill health.

"I don't quite know. Who are you? Do you need a cane or staff or something?" Holly looked around, searching for such an item, and found none.

"Is there one around here? It'd be very nice if you gave me a staff. My back hurts so..."

"Oh, yes. There's one right there!" Holly pointed at a small nook between two half-ruined walls and whispered her focus word. "MADECASSEE!" A second later, a smooth stick of a cane appeared in the niche. Holly retrieved it, and gently handed it over to the old man.

"Thank you, young lady. I'm Henry Peters. It's nice to meet a fellow American citizen before I die out here in a foreign country." Henry told Holly, accepting the cane and smiling warmly. Holly got a glimpse of his eyes before Henry averted them again. They looked strange, almost as if he'd gone blind. Henry didn't seem to be able to see very well, anyway.

Something clicked in Holly's head. She suddenly knew why Henry seemed familiar: it was because in the vision she'd had yesterday had featured Henry Peters himself, only much younger than he was now! What had happened to him? Was it the effect of Azazel's Methuselah binding?

"Are you a vision?" Henry asked, looking back at Holly. Holly, not exactly knowing what she was, shrugged.

"I don't know what I am right now. What day is it?"

"I think it's December 19th, isn't it?" Henry replied.

Holly shrugged again. "I'll have to take your word for it." she said, and looked over at the mud-brick wall.

"Hello, Holly." Came a deep, steady voice, that was quite the opposite of Henry's quavery voice.

Holly turned around quickly. "Gabriel!" she shouted, and the archangel smiled, but shushed her.

"Quiet, child. You wouldn't want Nimrod, Mark, and Cas to hear you. You're not far off right now, so we'd best be leaving. Goodbye, Mr. Peters." Gabriel nodded politely at Henry, who seemed to be petrified with terror, and offered his arm to Holly.

Holly took it, and they vanished. At least, that was what Henry saw it as. He shivered, but was glad all the same, because his near-blindness seemed to have mysteriously been cured.

"This way!" shouted a girl from a few streets over. She sounded very, very familiar.

* * *

Gabriel was dressed, as usual, in his white Sunday pantsuit, and was holding his cane with the handle that was carved in the shape of a ram's head.

As soon as they had properly materialized in a lush, tropical fern house, Gabriel let go of Holly and turned to speak. "So, Holly." he said. "How've you been? I know that you djinn get awfully cold in the wintertime up in London." Gabriel had a mischievous glint in his stormy grey eyes that meant, to Holly, at least, that he had something important to hint at. That was one of the things that Holly disliked about almost all of the angels she had met thus far. With the possible exception of Daemiel, the angel of advice, the angels Holly had met never came out and said anything flat out when they had something to say. They always tried to lead whoever it was that they were talking to to the answer, usually as slowly as possible.

Holly decided to play along. "Yes, well, I have been quite cold in London, but it's been great other than that." Although, in the greenhouse, it was quite humid, and Holly felt great.

"Good, good." Gabriel said, almost to himself. Then he cleared his throat and spoke more loudly. "How is everyone?"

"They've been good. Mr. Groanin has gone on holiday, so I expect that we won't see him for awhile. We're all headed to Alexandria." Holly paused. "Why did Nimrod decide to take us to Alexandria? Do you know, Gabriel?"

Gabriel nodded. "Yes, I do know. But I've been forbidden to tell you. Nimrod will have to tell you himself, when he feels it is pertinent."

Holly frowned. "Why can't you just tell me now? I promise that I'll keep it to myself."

Gabriel laughed and shook his head. "Holly, you know that if I've been forbidden to do something, then I won't do it. No, not even for you."

Holly sighed. "I'll find out sooner or later, I suppose." she said, still feeling privately annoyed with him for not telling her.

"I'm sorry," Gabriel did sound sorry, and he had such a hangdog look on his face, that Holly instantly forgave him.

"It's fine, Gabriel. Anyway, what's Azazel up to this time?" Holly asked. Gabriel lost his sheepish look and straightened up.

"If I were you, I'd ask the man who was robbed of his discovery by the demon-child." he replied. "You'll find him in another day or so. You should be able to tell when that is."

"How?" Holly asked, but she already felt herself being dragged away from the greenhouse and back into consciousness. "How?" She called, louder this time, as a large black feather fluttered down from above.

Gabriel only smiled and waved goodbye, just before everything began to unravel around them, and fade into brilliant, white light.


	5. Chapter 4: A Foe or an Ally

Chapter 4: A Foe or an Ally

Bartholomew Aalesworth watched his enemies carefully from a few seats away. He checked his watch, decided that it was a good time in the flight to leave his body temporarily, and muttered his focus word.

"PALANQUIN," Bart whispered, and in no time at all, the Chinese-American djinn had risen out of his body and made his way, invisibly, to where Castiel Malone, once known to Bart as Alistair Teer, the youngest son of Bart's almost life-long friend, Dimme Teer.

Bart had, at first, been wary of the Ifritah, being himself of the Ghul tribe of djinn. However, after a while, Bart began to get to know Dimme and her brother Iblis, and even began to trust them a bit. After Dimme's fall from grace with the rest of her family, she and Bart had become even closer. Bart knew that Dimme couldn't defend herself, because she hadn't planned on having the demon Beelzebub twist her further into evil inclinations, so far that even Iblis had been afraid of her. But not Bart. Bart just couldn't imagine his friend, who had been so frightened of Beelzebub's wrath that she had pampered Azazel until she lost the use of her djinn powers, to be anything but horribly vulnerable.

This, of course, was a gross exaggeration on the part of Bart. Dimme was far from vulnerable, being quite schooled in various assassin techniques, that she had perfected the old-fashioned way; that is, solely without the use of djinn power of any sort.

Bart had to forcefully jerk himself back to the present. Reliving memories of the semi-distant past was far too distracting for what he had to do right now.

Bracing himself for the possible, nay, probable, repercussions of what he was about to do, Bart shut his eyes and entered Cas's sleeping body.

Cas had been dreaming of New York again. Or, more specifically, New York's Central Park, and the many afternoons that he had spent in it, just hanging around for the heck of it. He was seated on a concrete park bench, observing some skateboarders pull some really awesome moves, and vaguely wanting to join them, when a tall, Asian-looking man wearing jeans and a t-shirt appeared out of nowhere. He looked oddly familiar, but despite this, Cas was quite certain that he had never seen this man anywhere before.

"You're Castiel, right?" The man asked, squinting at Cas carefully. Cas frowned.

"Who wants to know? You're not another angel, are you?" He asked Bart suspiciously.

Bart guffawed. "Naw, I'm no angel. Bart Aalesworth is my name. I'm from Indianapolis. I'm a djinn, like yourself. Wait, scratch that, not like you, I'm purely djinn." he said. Cas relaxed a little bit.

"Yeah, I'm Castiel, but you can just call me Cas. It's easier that way, especially if the actual Castiel shows up." Cas raised an eyebrow at Bart, suddenly suspicious again. "How do you know I'm not a full-blooded djinn?" Cas could almost swear that he'd met Bart once before, but the really irritating thing was that Cas couldn't quite place where.

"Don't freak out, kid." Bart said, "But I was once a friend of your mom."

Immediately, Cas stood up, taking a more defensive position than he'd had while seated on the park bench. "Dimme Teer is an Ifrit. What are you? Who are you?"

Bart threw his hands up in a show of submission. "Calm down, Cas." he said. "I'm here to talk, not fight, I swear. Just listen for a minute."

Cas didn't calm down, and suddenly he became aware of the bronze lamp he was clutching. It was _his _lamp, the lamp with an ivory handle carved in the shape of an angel in full flight. It was the lamp that the angel Castiel had given to him.

"Castiel!" Cas called loudly. "I need you!" A second later, the angel Castiel appeared, somber as always and, also as always, clad in a pure white robe.

Bart cursed loudly, earning him an annoyed glare from Castiel.

"What are you doing here, Ghul?" Castiel asked. "You most emphatically do _not_belong in Cas's head."

"I just want to talk, sir. Nothing more. I promise." Bart told Castiel respectfully, his hands still raised in the air.

Castiel scrutinized Bart's face, searching for any hint of falsehoods. Finally, Castiel nodded. "Go on, then. Tell us what you will."

Bart visibly relaxed, and began. He wasn't exactly thrilled to have an angel invade upon the conversation, but he could see that Castiel was not about to leave any time soon.

"We first met each other when you were born, Cas. I knew your brother, too. Even at two years old, that kid was nothing but trouble to every djinn around him. That's why I'm here: I've come to inform you that Azazel is hard at it again. And this time it may not be as simple as calling in an archangel to do the hard stuff for you."

"And why do you care?" Cas asked fiercely, crossing his arms for effect.

Bart shrugged. "I was pretty much Dimme's only friend after Azazel came along. There weren't many who would associate themselves with a djinn who had a half-demon child on her hands. Two, in Dimme's case. It was far too risky for all of the other djinn. Even her brother Iblis shunned her after you appeared. So, it's not so much for your sake as it is for Dimme's."

Castiel sighed. "Continue with your story. What is Azazel plotting this time?"

Bart stood up straighter, looking slightly guilty, as though he had jumped the gun on something. "Well," he began delicately. "This is kinda... awkward. To tell you two the truth, I'm not exactly sure what Azazel is up to. All the info I've gathered was all to do with finding his 'missing link' and searching the spirit world. There's been some unrest there, I've heard."

Cas glanced at Castiel to see him nod again.

"There's been talk of Alexander's lion. I've been shepherding some very terrified souls lately."

Bart bounced on the balls of his feet, nodding as he did so. "Makes sense," he said, and then stopped nodding. "Right, well, I'm gonna leave now. See ya around, Cas." Bart waved farewell cheerfully, and muttered something under his breath. In a moment, Cas and Castiel were left alone in the Central Park dreamscape.

Cas turned to Castiel. "Who is Alexander? And who or what is his lion?"

Castiel sighed. "Alexander of Macedonia. The lion is just an old legend. Purely the stuff of myth."

Cas's interest was piqued. "I want to hear this legend." Cas told his angelic companion, but Castiel shook his head.

"It's unimportant. The only magus who could really bind the spirit of a djinn to this world as Kafele the Ruthless supposedly did was Solomon." Castiel said, and Cas frowned.

"But Castiel..." Cas tried to protest, but Castiel vanished, and the Central Park dreamscape began to dissipate as Cas slowly woke up.

"Ah, you've woken up." Nimrod said mildly as he noticed Cas stretching in his seat and yawning. "I daresay that you could use a charcoal pill." Nimrod placed a bookmark in his book, (a biography of Alexander the Great,) took out his pillbox full of silvery charcoal pills, and gave one to Cas.

Cas took it gratefully, as he felt extremely claustrophobic, even within the minute or so that he'd been awake. "Thanks," he said, and looked again at the biography that Nimrod had been reading. Cas recalled that Alexander the Great was sometimes called Alexander the Greek because he was from...  
Something clicked inside Cas's head as he remembered what Castiel had said about Alexander of Macedonia, and realized that the two Alexanders were one and the same.

Cas glanced across the aisle at his best friend. Holly was still fast asleep, so Cas turned back to Nimrod.

"Have you ever heard of Alexander's lion?" Cas asked him. Slowly, Nimrod began to shake his head, but paused.

"Actually, I have. But it's only a folk tale. I doubt that even King Solomon himself could have bound a djinn's spirit to the earth like that." Nimrod said, adjusting his reading glasses nervously.

"You sound exactly like Castiel," Cas complained. "He wouldn't tell it to me either."

"And well he shouldn't have," Nimrod told Cas, "it simply won't do to fill your head with such nonsense."

Cas's expression darkened as he watched Nimrod open his book again. There was something that Nimrod wasn't telling him, something to do with Alexander's lion that was quite aside from the story itself.

"I'm a kid," Cas said, searching carefully for some strange reaction. "All I do is fill my head with nonsense."

Nimrod didn't even look up from the biography, merely shrugged ambiguously.

"I'll research it on the internet," Cas threatened.

Nimrod looked up then, an expression of vague amusement playing across his features. "You can try, but you won't find anything. _Alexander's Lion _is a story that has been passed down solely by word of mouth, and only among the djinn. I think you'll find that the internet will prove quite useless." Nimrod nodded emphatically, and pulled out his gold pocket watch. Then he leaned past Cas to address Mark, who was seated on the far side of his sister. "Mark?" Nimrod called, and Mark leaned over to listen to what Nimrod had to say.

"Yeah?" he called back.

"Wake Holly up, will you? We're nearly there."

Mark nodded. "Just a minute." he said.


	6. Chapter 5: The Golden Lion

Chapter 5: The Golden Lion

Mark prodded his sister until she opened her eyes and yawned hugely. "Wake up, sleepyhead!" he laughed at her. "We're almost there! You slept through the entire flight."

Holly blinked several times and yawned again. "Really? Weird, I don't remember dreaming anything at all. Can you give me a charcoal pill, pretty please?"

Mark laughed again, but handed his sister one of the silvery charcoal pills all the same.

Cas leaned over from across the aisle to join the conversation. "Doesn't mean that you didn't have a dream, Hol. You'll prolly remember it when you need to." He winked at Holly, and Holly rubbed her eyes and smiled.

"You're probably right, Cas." she said. The red lettered sign at the front of the cabin began flashing, telling everyone to fasten their seatbelts.

The plane landed in Alexandria a few minutes after midnight. After she was off of the plane and inside again, Holly had the distinct impression that she was being watched. Nervously, she readjusted her red silk hijab and looked around the Borg el Arab airport terminal. She was almost certain that the person or people that was watching them was lurking just out of sight.

"Keep watching, my child." Nimrod muttered to her out of the corner of his mouth, noticing her unrest, "Act natural."

Holly tried to relax as she followed Nimrod, Cas, and Mark to the luggage carousel, pausing for a second to give an old, smelly beggar two 200 Egyptian pound notes. The man looked delighted at her generosity, and thanked Holly several times in Arabic. Holly smiled at him warmly, and hurried to catch up with her comrades.

"Who's watching us?" she whispered to her father, and he pretended to be engrossed in watching the almost hypnotic motion of the conveyor belt.

"It could be anyone, really." Nimrod said quietly. "I can't tell if it's a friend or a foe. All the same, do look at your luggage carefully before you pick it up- there may be something nasty lurking on it, courtesy of our enemies."

Holly was about to ask what sort of 'something nasty' Nimrod was talking about, when she caught sight of her cherry red leather messenger bag coming around the bend. Not seeing any obvious creatures or some djinn binding on the bag, reached for it, only to have her hand slapped away by a very familiar cherry wood cane.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you, Miss Godwin. Scorpions can kill you, you know." said a deep voice. Holly turned around, a huge grin on her face, to see Gabriel, dressed as he always was, and wielding his cane, which was pointed rather threateningly towards Holly's bag. He pushed Holly, Cas, Mark, and Nimrod, the latter three of which seemed to be absolutely stupefied by the archangel's presence in the airport, out of the way. Carefully, Gabriel snagged the strap of Holly's bag with the carved handle of his cane, set the bag down on the floor, and calmly began beating it.

A security guard noticed, and began fighting his way through the crowds of people who had circled around them to watch. with horrified curiosity, what Gabriel was doing. The burly security guard shouted something in Arabic, but neither Gabriel nor anyone else paid the slightest attention to him.

Within a quarter of a minute, several copper coloured scorpions scurried out of the pockets of the bag, and their appearance was immediately followed by screams of terror from all of the tourists in the crowd. Ignoring them, and acting almost as if he was playing some strange lawn game, Gabriel turned his cane right-side up, pressed a small, almost invisible button on the ram's head that revealed a very sharp retractable point at the lower end of the cane. Without sparing a second, the archangel skewered each and every one of the identical arachnids, never allowing even one to come within three feet of anyone.

After he had finished, and the security guard came and shakily congratulated him, Gabriel politely tipped his white fedora to Holly and casually made for the door, with the still-wriggling scorpions remaining firmly on the cane.

Silently, the three djinn and Mark reclaimed the rest of their luggage, a task that was facilitated by virtue of the simple fact that no one seemed very inclined to pick up their luggage anymore, for fear of being stung by more hidden scorpions. Nimrod led them out of the airport terminal and to the dark street outside, where he hailed a yellow taxi cab.

"Well," Mark said tensely as soon as they had loaded all of the luggage into the trunk, gotten in, and Nimrod had told the Egyptian cabbie the address to go to, "That certainly was... exciting." The cabbie began steering the taxi through the busy midnight streets of Alexandria, more than once just narrowly missing a pedestrian. The drama of the scorpions, however, was still quite fresh in all of their minds, and the cabbie's incautious driving seemed like the least of their problems.

"If it wasn't for Gabriel, we would all be quite dead right now. And if not all of us, then most certainly Holly at the very least. I'm fairly certain, my dear, that the Ifrit placed those scorpions in your bag. More specifically, it was probably Azazel's doing. It makes perfect sense that you'd be a target of his, seeing as you were the only reason his plan to destroy Europe did not succeed."

"Hold up," Holly said, who had been nodding in agreement up until she realized something was off. She fixed her father with a suspicious glare. "How did you know that he was Gabriel?"

Nimrod thought for a moment, his mind racing to come up with a good lie, and failing dismally. "He... fit the description." Nimrod said lamely, shrugging his shoulders in a way that made it quite clear to Holly, at least, that he was withholding some rather important information from her.

Holly sighed, knowing that now was not the right time to say, in so many words, that Nimrod was lying. Instead, she came up with a slightly subtler question to draw the truth out. "Are you going to tell me the real reason we're in Alexandria?" she asked, crossing her arms. To her dismay, it was Mark, not Nimrod, who answered first.

"No," he told her shortly, and looked at Nimrod, as if to remind him of something. "Simple as that."

Holly glared at her brother. Now that she was back in one of the hottest countries on Earth, Holly was itching to perform some djinn magic that she'd been deprived of ever since the middle of autumn. "Watch it, brother mine," she threatened. "I'll turn you into a chipmunk if you're not careful."

This, of course, was nothing more than a bluff designed to make Mark shut up for a while, but Mark saw right through the act. He laughed heartily, eyes twinkling with mirth as he contemplated the idea of being turned into a tiny chipmunk.

"No you won't. You can't fool me, kiddo." Mark finally puffed through his laughter.

At this point, Cas felt obliged to change the subject. Even though it amused him, Cas was disturbed at the idea of Holly doing something as cruel as turning her brother into a small furry rodent, even for a couple seconds. "Where exactly are we headed, Nimrod?" Cas asked, trying to keep his mind off of chipmunks.

Nimrod seemed thankful for the diversion. "We'll be staying at a bed and breakfast owned by the sister of a deceased friend of mine, Hussein Hussaout. It was his great misfortune to be killed by Iblis the Ifrit a couple years ago. Ah, here we are!"

The taxi stopped in front of an old, ramshackle building with a sign out front that read, (in both Arabic and English,) "The Golden Lion Room and Board, Inquire Within."

Nimrod smiled at it as he got out of the taxi cab and began unloading their luggage from the trunk.

"This is it?" Mark asked, looking doubtfully at the crumbling brick facade of the worn boardinghouse.

"Yes it is!" Beamed Nimrod. "Don't let its modest countenance fool you, Mark. Femi Hansen's pension is easily the best in Alexandria. Part of the reason being," Now Nimrod took on a mock secretive look, " is that Femi married a djinn. Vidor Hansen of the Jinn tribe, from Norway. Vidor may seem a bit strange to you at first, but I assure you all, he is quite benevolent."

As Holly and Cas exchanged a slightly worried glance, Mark shrugged and helped Nimrod unloading the trunk. Nimrod then hurried over to the cabbie and handed him a stack of money. Delighted, the cabbie thanked Nimrod profusely and drove off into the darkness away from the boardinghouse.

Cas raised an eyebrow. "How much did you pay him?" he asked Nimrod. Nimrod only shrugged and led the way up to the front door. Apprehensively, Holly, Cas, and Mark followed, dragging their respective suitcases along behind them. Nimrod paused before knocking on the front door, using a brass ring that was protruding from a brass lion's mouth.

After a minute or two of banging on the door, it flew open to reveal a tall, rather grumpy-looking, violently red-headed man dressed in a pale blue nightshirt and matching cap.

At the sight of them in the dim light, the red-headed man began to mutter darkly in Norwegian. Then he yawned hugely, his nightcap almost falling off of his head, and flicked a switch just inside the doorway. A second or two later, a weak incandescent light popped on, causing Holly, Cas, Mark, and Nimrod to all blink several times in quick succession.

The red-headed man seemed to recognize Nimrod, now that he could properly see him.

"Oh, Nimrod, it's you. I wondered when you'd arrive. Come on in, but do try to be quiet. Everyone else is asleep." he smiled through his bushy red beard.  
Nimrod nodded and beckoned to Mark Cas, and Holly to follow him.

For Mark, stepping inside the front hall of the pension was like stepping into a stiflingly hot oven. He gasped for breath, turning a little red in the face and feeling almost as though he was going to black out. The red-headed Norwegian raised a bushy red eyebrow.

"You're a mundane, _ja_?" The Norwegian man asked, seeming slightly amused by Mark's exaggerated gasping for breath. Nimrod glanced at him, smiled, also somewhat amused, and introduced everyone.

"Vidor, this is my daughter, Holly, her best friend, cas, and Holly's adoptive brother, Mark. He is indeed a mundane. Everyone, this is Vidor Hansen."

Vidor nodded amiably as each of them as Holly, Cas, and Mark were introduced. "If it's too hot for you down here, Mark," he said kindly, "You can go right up to your room- the rooms have very good air conditioning."

Vidor handed Mark a room key bearing the number 25, and Mark nodded gratefully.

"Thank you, Mr. Hansen," he said, and wearily found his way to the stairs.

"You're quite welcome. And do call me Vidor, that holds true for all of you kids, _hva_?" Vidor smiled warmly at Holly and Cas, before turning back to Nimrod.

"You didn't tell me that you had a child, Nimrod. And what happened to your butler? What was his name again? Groanin, I believe."

"Mr. Groanin went on his Christmas holiday to Bumby," Cas supplied helpfully. Vidor gave a snort of disgust.

"Bumby, you say? Ugh. What a _fryktelig _little town. I can't imagine why anyone would want to go there on a holiday, especially during the winter when it gets so cold in England. Really, I don't." Vidor shook his head.

"Uh, Vidor?" Holly said, unwilling to interrupt or sound rude, "What does _fryktelig_ mean?"

"Hm? Oh, dear me, am I mixing languages again? I'm sorry, Holly. _Fryktelig_ is Norwegian for _horrible_. If I begin doing that again, you just tell me. I'm not quite as fluent in English as I am in Norwegian or Arabic. In any case, you two kids be very tired, I'm sure. Here are your room keys. Rooms 26 and 27." Vidor gave Holly and Cas their keys, and gestured in the direction of the stairs that Mark was still slowly making his way up. "Femi starts making breakfast at nine o'clock. You can meet my niece, Ingrid, and Femi's nephew, Baksheesh Hussaout. Nimrod already knows him, of course, but I'm sure Baksheesh will be pleased to meet other children of his own age. Goodnight, kids." Holly and Cas glanced at each other, nodded in unison, and obediently went up the stairs after Mark.

"Listen in?" Cas asked his friend in a low whisper.

"Listen in." Holly agreed, also in a whisper, so that Mark wouldn't hear.

They hid, just out of sight on the second floor landing, and, using djinn power to enhance their ears, listened closely to what the two adult djinn were discussing.

Unfortunately, Nimrod had guessed that Holly and Cas might try and listen in, so he and Vidor were conversing in Norwegian, a language that both Holly and Cas only knew one word of, and that was because of Vidor's earlier slip-up.

Holly muttered her focus word, willing herself to understand Norwegian, and, when nothing happened, she bit back a curse.

Cas sighed, having tried to do the same, and shrugged. "Let's go to our rooms, then. Not much point in trying to eavesdrop now."

Feeling crushed, Holly nodded and followed Cas down the second floor hallway to rooms 26 and 27.


	7. Chapter 6: Breakfast at Femi's

Chapter 6: Breakfast at Femi's

Nimrod had hardly exaggerated. Holly looked around room 26 in frank wonder as she set her very heavy red suitcase down on the plush, carpeted floor. Feeling awestruck, Holly walked across the room to rest her hand on one of the four posts of a huge canopy bed furnished with the finest Irish linen sheets, and a soft satin coverlet, which had been neatly folded down. Holly felt almost like Sara Crewe from the book _A Little Princess_, when Sara finds her old, dingy attic full of beautiful and wonderful things. Turning around now, Holly examined the other furniture of room 26. An intricately carved applewood wardrobe stood at one end of the room, towering imperiously over everything else in the room. A vanity table painted with a whimsical, gold-embossed pride of lions was pushed against a wall that had a large window, across which were pulled dark drapes. Holly ran her fingers over the carved wooden frame of the rectangular mirror, examining her reflection. The looking glass showed her an American girl who looked very, very tired and white, at least compared to the red hijab that was still wrapped around her head. Sleepily, Holly took it off and allowed it to fall onto the floor as she yawned and decided that it was time for her to go to sleep.

Feeling absolutely too tired to change out of her clothes and into her pyjamas, Holly shuffled over to the canopy bed and collapsed on top of the covers. Within minutes, she had drifted off into a dreamless sleep.

The next thing she knew, it was morning, and the hot Egyptian sun was streaming through a crack in the heavy, red velvet curtains. She had been awoken by a pounding on the door of room 26, and a young, girlish voice was calling to Holly to wake up. At least, that's what Holly took the shouting in Norwegian to mean.

Hastily, Holly dragged some fresh clothes on, quickly brushed her hair, fashioned it into a somewhat haphazard bun, and speedily wrapped her hijab around her head. Almost tripping over herself, she tried to put on her sandals and walk over to the door simultaneously. She managed to open the door to see whoever it was who was calling her to breakfast. Pinning her hijab properly into place, Holly was met by the sight of a small girl, probably about ten years old, who had very curly red hair, and looked amazingly similar to Vidor.

"Hello," Holly said, yawning hugely. "Are you Vidor's niece Ingrid?"

"_Ja_," Ingrid said cheerfully. "And you are Nimrod's daughter, _ja_?"

Blearily, Holly nodded. "Is it breakfast time already?"

Ingrid shook her head, causing her red curls to fly about wildly. "Not yet, but I wanted to meet you. Cousin Baksheesh wants to meet you, as well. Come downstairs with me? Please?" Ingrid looked imploringly up at Holly, and Holly smiled and nodded, almost laughing when Ingrid leapt up and clapped her hands with joy.

"How are you related to Vidor? Are you a djinn, too?" Holly yawned again as she followed little Ingrid down the hallway to the staircase.

"Yes, I am a djinn. My mother is Uncle Vidor's sister, but mamma gave up her powers a long time ago, so Uncle Vidor must teach me how to be a good djinn." Ingrid explained cheerfully, swinging herself around the end of the banister and onto the top step.

"Why'd your mother give up her powers?" Holly asked, feeling mildly perplexed. In her opinion, finding out that she had the ability to work her will in the physical world had been the best thing that ever happened to her, second only to Holly finding out that she had a whole other (djinn) family.

"Mamma never told me why, just that she did. That doesn't stop her from not liking _Norge_, though. It is really cold up North. Not where you would expect to find many djinn."

Holly nodded thoughtfully. "No, I suppose that Norway isn't where you'd expect to find heat-loving djinn at all. But then again, London gets really cold in the wintertime, too, and I know for a fact that there are a ton of djinn living there. Same with New York."

"_Ja_," Ingrid agreed buoyantly. "Oh, here we are, Holly. Aunt Femi is cooking breakfast still."

Ingrid had led Holly to a well-lit screened patio that had several small, square tables scattered around. About four of these square tables had been pushed together to form one long table at which Mark, Nimrod, and an Egyptian boy about the same age as Holly were all seated, pushed over to one end.

"Good morning," Holly said, looking curiously at the Egyptian boy, who stood up immediately and bowed respectfully, as though he were in the presence of royalty, which made Holly feel rather uncomfortable. "Er... are you Baksheesh?" she asked him awkwardly.

"Yes, I am. And you are Holly Godwin, the daughter of Nimrod, aren't you?" Baksheesh had bright, intelligent eyes that seemed, to Holly, to hold an, as-yet, unknown secret. Holly shook hands with him, abandoning the usual djinn handshake in light of the fact that Baksheesh was a mundane, through and through.

Vidor came out onto the patio, bringing with him the mercurial air of an enthusiastic host. Following in his wake, Cas appeared, yawning widely. Holly grinned at his tired countenance.

"Good morning, Vidor. Good morning, Cas." Nimrod greeted the two djinn as they sat down at the table, leaving just one seat left at the long table.

"Been reading a lot, Cas?" Holly teased her best friend, and Cas smiled groggily.

"Old habits die hard, Hol." he replied, yawning again.

Vidor, ignoring Cas and Holly, bellowed out a good morning to them all, and introduced Ingrid and Baksheesh to everyone. "Ingrid is still learning English, so if you'd help her with any question she has, I'd be much obliged." Vidor smiled robustly, and called over his shoulder, in flawless and perfectly accented Arabic, in the direction of a pair of swinging doors. "Femi? Are you almost done in there?"

A minute or two later, the voice of a woman, also speaking Arabic, shouted back to him, and a second after that, Femi Hussaout Hansen, a rather stout, middle-aged woman wearing a black hijab over her hair, backed out of the double swinging doors, carrying a large tray laden with wonderful smelling plates of eggs and beans, bowls full of fresh fruits, several cheeses (one of which Holly recognized as feta cheese,) and several rounds of pita bread.

"I hope that you all enjoy the meal that I have prepared for you," she said in careful English as she distributed the food around the long table. Everyone thanked her politely, and Femi beamed with pride.

Otherwise, breakfast was eaten in relative silence, with only the occasional comment on this or that, how great the morning weather was, or a compliment on Femi's excellent cooking.

After everyone had finished eating, Femi dragged her nephew along with her back into the kitchen and they emerged, about a minute later, with tea fixings, enough for everyone.

It wasn't until after the tea had been served that Nimrod spoke to the group at large.

"Well, now that we're all pleasantly stuffed, it occurs to me that today is a perfect day for a lesson in djinn power. Something fun for our first day in Alexandria, such as animal possession, perhaps. Holly, Cas, I trust that you remember how to perform an astral projection?"

Holly and Cas glanced at each other, smiled, and spoke in unison. "We couldn't possibly forget it, Nimrod."

Mark scowled as he recalled his opinions of the day Nimrod had first taught the two young djinn about possession, and how he'd been volunteered to be, essentially, a guinea pig for them. He remembered the horrible feeling of his privacy being invaded by his little sister and Cas, and he had learned never to willingly volunteer himself for any of Nimrod's "lessons" in the future.

"I wish I could forget it," Mark said, forgetting for the moment that he was in the presence of five djinn, two of them being quite powerful. "I'm never letting you lot use me as a guinea pig ever again!"

"Be quiet, chipmunk." Holly quipped testily, reminding him of her previous threat to transform him into one of the rodents. Mark scowled some more at his sister, but became silent all the same, turning to Vidor when he spoke up.

"Ingrid and I will come along," he said, almost as though Mark and Holly hadn't spoken. "My niece could use the practice, and quite frankly, so could I. We could go to a nice bit of desert I know near El-Hamam, make a day of it. I can drive us there in my Mercedes. I don't suppose you want to come, Femi?"

Slowly, Femi shook her head. "The desert is not a place for humans, but for djinn. No, Baksheesh and I shall stay here and look after the pension while you are gone. I have been meaning to do some cleaning, and Baksheesh has some homework that he must do."

"Very well, _min kjærlighet_, if you're sure. We'll see you in the evening, then." Vidor smiled lovingly at his wife, and finished off his share of the mint tea that Femi had made.

Femi smiled back. "I'm sure, Vidor." she told him gently, prompting Holly to wonder vaguely, as she finished her own tea, how Vidor and Femi had met each other. However, this was a story to remain shrouded in mystery, as right now, Holly had to get ready for a proper djinn day in the desert.


	8. Chapter 7: Flour and Fire

Chapter 7: Flour and Fire

Cas sat next to Holly in the back seat of Vidor's Mercedes benz, which was a lot roomier on the inside than it looked on the outside. Cas supposed that it must have been djinn made. He stared out of the window at Alexandria as it sped by, slowly changing into desert as Vidor steered his car further and further west. The landscape began to blur together, the speed accelerating dramatically when at last they reached a highway. Cas listened, somewhat bored, to the heated debate that Holly was having with her brother about whether or not Holly would actually turn Mark into a chipmunk if she had to.

Cas wished that Holly and Mark would leave the chipmunk thing alone; it was getting old. He wondered, vaguely, what Gabriel would think of Holly's threat to her brother. Almost as if he was flipping a switch inside his head, his vision began to flicker in between the Mercedes and someplace else, somewhere that looked like a painfully white kitchen, with pots and pans and power tools scattered around, as well as a large refrigerator, and everything was dusted in a coat of powdery white flour. Cas began to panic as he realized that the kitchen was no illusion or hallucination, but one hundred percent as real as the Mercedes.

"Hey! What's going on?" He shouted, but no one seemed to hear him. A moment later, the flickering between places ceased, and Cas was alone in the bright white kitchen. He wondered where he was, and who on earth could keep power tools in their kitchen. "Hello?" Cas called, looking around to see if he could spot someone else. Silence still reigned supreme, but he heard padding footsteps approaching the door, and a key being turned in the lock. Tentatively, a familiar face poked his head around the doorframe.

"Cas? What are you doing here?" Gabriel seemed shocked and even a little afraid, and he wasn't wearing his usual cream-coloured suit. Rather, he was clad in a pair of bright tomato-red brick print boxer shorts and a ragged, discoloured white t-shirt. It was very surprising for Cas to see the archangel in such informal clothes, but he took it in stride, and merely shrugged.

"I don't even know where _here_ is." he replied simply, tactfully not mentioning how Gabriel was dressed. Gabriel glanced around nervously, his long, curly brown hair that wasn't exactly a mullet moving slightly in a nonexistent breeze, and beckoned Cas to come away. Cas, very curious, followed Gabriel out into an equally white hallway, where they paused so that Gabriel could lock the door to the kitchen again.

"Come this way. We can talk in the living room." Gabriel led Cas down the hallway, and then another, through such confusing twists and turns that Cas was sure he would get lost trying to find his way back. Finally, they reached a large room, with deep, foresty green armchairs and couches littered around in no apparent arrangement. Cas wondered why this room wasn't completely white like all the others he'd seen, but Gabriel seemed to anticipate his question.

"It's green because it's the only colour that my three brothers and I could agree on. I would have preferred white, myself, but my brothers said that white would be too monotonous. Green is good, though." Gabriel sat down on one of the armchairs and put his feet up on a coffee table and gestured to the armchair opposite him. Cas sat down tentatively.

"So where exactly are we?" he asked. "I take it you live here, but where is here?"

Gabriel blinked innocently. "What gave you that impression?" He said, but Cas knew that he was only kidding. Cas sort of half-laughed, and Gabriel grinned good-naturedly. "This is heaven, Cas. More specifically, this is the place where us archangels hang out. You know, me, Michael, Raphael, and Uriel. No? Not Uriel? Huh. Anyway, they're all off on business trips, so I had the place to myself. At least until you showed up out of nowhere." Gabriel paused, as he thought of something. "Why did you turn up in Heaven, anyway? You're not dead, are you?"

It was Cas's turn to grin at the absurdity of this. "Naw, I just wanted to come up and visit. But what was so important about that kitchen that I ended up in?"

Gabriel leaned forwards and scrutinized Cas, searching for signs of deception. When he found none, Gabriel sat back into the green armchair and sighed. "First off, that room you turned up in isn't a kitchen. That's Father's workshop. No one is supposed to go in there except for us four archangels. That's where creation happened, Cas. God created the world and everything that lives on it in his workshop, including humans, djinn, and angels. That's what's such a big deal about you randomly turning up in there. If any of the demons caught wind that you had the power to teleport to Father's workshop, all hell'd break loose for you- and others around you."

Gabriel had a much different manner of speaking in Heaven. He sounded a lot more casual, Cas decided, here on his home turf.

"I still don't get it." Cas said, frowning now, "why would the demons be interested in commandeering God's workshop?"

Gabriel sighed. "There's things about it that even Michael doesn't know about that room. All I know is that if even one demon gets his hands on any one of the four keys to that workroom, we're all done for. However, it's been my suspicion that the workshop is a lot more than it seems. That there might be some of God's leftover creative power in there, in some sort of container. If it does exist, then it's plain to see why the demons'd want it. They'd use it to destroy all that's good" Gabriel sighed and shrugged. "It beats me how you even got up here if you're not dead. Or, at the very least in a coma."

Cas shook his head again. "I don't think I am. The last thing I remember before being teleported here is being in Vidor's Mercedes and wondering what you'd think about Hol threatening to turn Mark into a chipmunk."

Gabriel grinned once more. "She did, did she? And why was that?"  
"I dunno. I think she was just a bit annoyed with him. It's a bit weird, having siblings, all of a sudden- well, I guess they're not exactly siblings of mine, but same difference."

Gabriel nodded, as if he understood, then he looked down at himself to pluck a bit of fluff from his t-shirt. "Please don't tell Holly that you caught me like this. It- well, it ruins the whole archangel mystique I've got going on. Try to avoid the subject, if you can."

Cas nodded, a little amused by how much Gabriel seemed to care about keeping up appearances for a prophet.

"Thanks. I'll send you back, then. Uhhh... I think that catching a leyline would be the fastest way. Bye!" Gabriel clicked his tongue twice, and gave Cas a friendly thumbs-up. Cas smiled back, but before he knew it, he was being rocketed through a sort of almost-but-not-quite-real tunnel with walls that were like thick sheets of glass, distorting everything that Cas passed by, and in any case, he was going far too fast to make any of it out clearly.

He'd just caught sight of the moon-like, pitted surface of part of the Egyptian desert, which seemed to be the only thing he could see clearly, when his progress suddenly came to an abrupt halt. A loud buzzing sound, as of thousands upon thousands of insects all flying at once, filled his ears, and Cas felt his heart crawl up into his throat.

"Who's there?" He demanded, of the half-blurred landscape, sounding much braver than he felt. The humming continued, louder now, but just underneath the noise, Cas could almost swear that he could hear deep, throaty, evil-sounding laughter. "Show yourself!" Cas commanded the being that was lurking just out of sight.

Immediately, Cas wished he hadn't. The desert began to melt away, only to be replaced by impenetrable darkness, and, all at once, the bugs stopped buzzing. Cas began to shiver as the temperature dropped dramatically, and his teeth chattered uncontrollably. He knew that without warmth, his still immature djinn power had abandoned him, but nonetheless, Cas had to try.

"AP- APOGEOTROPICAL!" he stuttered, and the light he'd wished for remained nonexistent. The cold was seeping further into his bones now, making him feel extremely torpid, and each gasp for breath felt like an extremely sharp knife cutting away at the inside of his throat. Before very long, cas was curled up in a ball from a mixture of cold and unrivaled terror.

He wished harder for a light- a fiery light to illuminate and warm him- than he'd ever wished before. Hairs on the nape of his neck stood up straight when the sound of heavy breathing began to approach him, slowly but surely, and now Cas couldn't see a thing in the pitch darkness.

"_You are my son, djinn-boy._" cas recognized the deep, demonic voice of Beelzebub, and shivered again, but not from the cold this time. "_You will do what I order you to do..._"

"No!" Cas shouted, still freezing, but feeling that if he didn't try to do something, evil would consume him in a matter of seconds. "I won't!" Indignation overtook fear, and cas stood up, facing where he thought Beelzebub must be with remarkable courage. "I WILL NOT!" Cas roared, and suddenly, as if triggered by his shouting, a brilliant white light flooded into the black abyss. Cas heard his demonic father hiss, like an overgrown housecat, and caught a glimpse of a shadowy humanoid figure scuttling to where the light could not reach.

"_You may have angels standing behind you now, djinn-boy of mine, but be sure that they will abandon you, as surely as they abandoned me!_" Beelzebub screeched, his voice much higher now, as if the pure white light had injured him somehow.

Cas had the singular sensation, that, just beyond the circle of light, Beelzebub was growing to immense proportions. Cas felt a twinge of fear, and the light, brilliant and pure white as it was, flickered as if in accordance with his emotions.

"Yoink!" someone shouted in his ear, and grabbed Cas's elbow, dragging him away. cas yelled, the light vanished, and so did Cas and his unseen assailant.

About a second later, Cas fell to his hands and knees on an expensive-looking oriental carpet. He felt sick to his stomach, so very sick that it wasn't until he had taken a few minutes to recover that he thought to find out who it was who had dragged him away from the leyline.

"Bart, isn't it?" Cas mumbled, none too pleased, as he recognized the Chinese-American djinn. Bart grinned in reply.

"You're welcome, Cas." he said.


	9. Chapter 8: Just Missed

Chapter 8: ...Just Missed...

Cas stood, his legs feeling more than a little like jelly after his ordeal with the demon. "Not that I'm trying to complain or anything," Cas began, openly staring at Bart, "But what was that all about?"

Bart grinned more broadly. "Nothing, really. I guess I'm just awesome that way." Cas looked at him flatly, as if to say 'really?' Bart sighed. "Fine. I wanted to talk to you, and lo and behold, I saw you on a dead leyline right outside my hotel room here in Alexandria. It was too great of an opportunity to pass up."

Cas steadied himself on a teak wood side table. "What was it you wanted to talk about?" He asked suspiciously. Now it was Bart's turn to raise his eyebrows skeptically.

"What else would I want to speak to you for but your brother's shenanigans?" Bart snorted at Cas somewhat cruelly. This reminded Cas that, although Bart seemed to be his ally, Bart Aalesworth still wasn't a good djinn, like Nimrod and Holly were.

"So what new info do you have for me that was so important that you had to drag me away from smiting evil?" Cas asked, stressing the word evil, to no avail.

"I overheard Azazel speaking with your mother. They were talking about something having to do with what Azazel called 'the most powerful weapon on earth, if modified in just the right way.'I bet that this is his 'missing link.' I'd be getting worried right about now, if I were in your shoes."

Cas shook his head slowly. "I'm already worried," he told Bart. "But worrying doesn't help anyone, least of all me. Do you have anything else?"

"Nope," Bart said as he shook his head firmly, his longish, shiny black hair shaking back and forth in accordance with the motion of it.

Cas remained silent for a moment, but then, remembering the _Baghdad Rules_, cleared his throat. "So, you... er... sort of saved my life..." Cas began, somewhat awkwardly. He'd never granted anyone three wishes before.

Bart nodded. "Yeah, it's nothing. You and your brother must be the most accident-prone djinn I've ever met."

Cas flinched, as he registered for the first time that Bart was calling Azazel Cas's brother. Bart chuckled a little bit.

"Oh, sorry. I forgot, you're an honorary Marid, aren't you. You don't want any ties to the flipside, do you?"

"No, I don't. _Anyway_, make your first wish."

Bart snorted again. "Three wishes? Cas, I didn't exactly drag you out of a burning building, or out of the middle of traffic in Manhattan. You may have not looked so hot, but my intervention had absolutely nothing to do with your living or dying. If I hadn't dragged you away when I did, you'd have faced your father head on, and very likely won. You've got some friends in high places, if I'm not very much mistaken. And- no offense, or anything,- but if I want wishes, I can do it myself. You're still not on the same level as Dimme, Nimrod, or I. No one wants to settle for second-best."

"Too late now," Cas insisted. "I've given them to you now. Make your first wish."

Bart sighed. "Cas, as great as this is, I'm going to wish for no more wishes from you. Ever. No, not even if I save your life again. It's distracting for me."

"Okay." Cas felt downhearted. He'd been looking forward to granting someone three wishes, even someone like Bart, and his first opportunity had been blown.

Bart seemed to sense that this was the case, and he was struck by an idea of how to make it up to Cas. "Tell you what, kid. I'll teach you how to whip up a whirlwind. Consider it taking the place of my wishes."

A few minutes later, Bart had led Cas up to the hotel roof. "Okay, Cas. Focus on bending the wind to your will. Twist it around, spin it around, too." Cas nodded, and tried to do as he was told. Before a second had passed, Bart groaned with exasperation. "No, no, no! You're doing it all wrong! Straighten up, boy!"

"Yes, sir!" Cas stood ramrod straight and tried again. He summoned the wind with his mind, and finally a huge funnel of whirling air whipped Cas's thick brown hair out of his face. Cas held it in place for a minute before it spun out of control and rushed through the power lines, causing several small birds who had been roosting there to flutter wildly.

"Push your heels against the wind, boy! Are you an idiot or something? Try again, and this time, do it right!" Bart scolded. Timidly, Cas nodded and finally, a strong gust of wind lifted him off of his feet. Bart gave him a double thumbs up. "Great job, kid. I assume you know your way to wherever you're going. We're in Alexandria, in case I didn't mention it."

"You did. Bye, Bart! Thanks for everything!" Cas called, as he carefully steered his whirlwind upwards and, conjuring up a compass, headed West, towards the desert to where he imagined his friends to be.

* * *

The really unfortunate thing for Cas was that Holly, Nimrod, Mark, Vidor, and Ingrid were not where Cas imagined them to be.

Shortly after Cas had blinked off to Gabriel's pad, Holly noticed his absence.

"Where's Cas?" Holly asked, thrown into a panic attack.

"Isn't he...?" Nimrod asked, turning around, and stopping in the middle of his question when he saw Cas's conspicuously vacant seat.

Vidor slammed on the breaks. "How did he vanish?" he asked when finally the Mercedes skidded to a halt on the sandy road.

"Should we go back to Alexandria? Perhaps something took him somewhere-"

_He transported himself._Interrupted Gabriel's voice in Holly's head, except Holly wasn't quite aware that only she could hear the angel.

"What?" she asked. "Gabriel, is that you?" Nimrod, Mark, Vidor, and Ingrid all stared at her, almost as if Holly had gone insane.

_Don't talk, just think._Gabriel told her.

_Okay._Holly thought to him. _What do you mean, Cas 'transported' himself?_

Everyone was still looking quite concerned, their concern triggered this time by Holly's expression of intense concentration.

_You don't have to pull a face like that. It's actually quite effortless- All guardians have an empathy link set up. Usually it's just called your conscience._Gabriel chided Holly gently.

_Wait just a minute there, _Holly thought, something just dawning on her. _Guardians? As in Guardian Angels?_

_That's unimportant right now. You have to get back to the city. You're almost late for your appointment. And as to what I meant by saying "Cas transported himself," I always mean what I say, but I don't always say what I mean. You get me?_

"Yeah." Holly spoke the last word aloud, forgetting that she was having her conversation with Gabriel inside her head.

_See you later, kiddo!_Gabriel said, and Holly felt his presence inside her brain leave, for the time being.

"Do you feel quite all right, my child?" Nimrod asked Holly, looking at her from over the gilded wire rims of his spectacles. Feeling a little bit dizzy, Holly nodded.

"Just fine. I don't think we have to worry about Cas, though. Gabriel said that we ought to head back to the city, I- OH!" Holly began, but then cried out, as if she'd just sat down on a very sharp tack.

"What is it?" Mark asked carefully. Even he wasn't used to such strange behaviour on the part of his sister.

"I just remembered something! Vidor, turn this car around- we're going back to Alexandria!" Holly announced, subconsciously beginning to chew on her nails, hoping that the path that had formed, perfect in every detail and almost free of doubt, in her mind did indeed lead them to Henry Peters.

"Very well, Holly." Vidor said, nodding, shot a questioning look to Nimrod, received a nonplussed shrug in reply, and steered the Mercedes in a U-turn.

Holly offered up a silent prayer, and whispered to her archangel friend. "Thanks, Gabe," she muttered, smiling. It might have been her imagination, but Holly felt almost as though Gabriel was grinning right back at her.

"So, kiddo, which way now?" Mark asked dryly, as they reached a juncture of two alleyways. Holly looked carefully at each possible path, then, consulting her mental map, chose the left one.

"This way!" she called, so that everyone could hear, and about a minute later, they came to a withered old man. Holly beamed at him, feeling immensely proud of herself. "Hi, Mr. Peters!" she said cheerfully. "You remember me, don't you? I'm the girl who found that walking-stick for you."

Henry blinked at her, then around at all of the rest of the group standing behind her. "Of course I remember you, kid! It's only been a couple seconds since you went and vanished with that man in the white suit. I may look old, but I'm not an idiot!"

"Mr. Peters was subjected to a Methuselah binding- the work of Azazel." Holly told Nimrod, Mark, Vidor, and Ingrid matter-of-factly.

"How do you know all of this?" Ingrid asked in wonder. Holly smiled down at the small djinn girl.

"Wouldn't you know it, I'm what they call a prophet. My dreams aren't ever meaningless anymore." Holly replied, and then turned back to Henry. "Do you happen to remember what those red hieroglyphics said?"

"What hieroglyphics, Miss?" Henry asked absentmindedly. Then, frowning, he began to cough and splutter. Before anyone could react, Henry collapsed on the dusty bricks. Immediately, Holly fell to one knee and felt Henry's neck for a pulse. She found none.

"He's dead," she announced quietly, the reality of the situation sinking in. Azazel had actually killed someone using his djinn power. Perhaps not directly, but it was indubitably Azazel's fault that Henry was now dead.

Mark had absolutely no idea how it was possible, but his mind was wandering off of the tragedy of Henry's death. He saw a flickering red glow out of the corner of his eye, and turned towards it. The red glow seemed to move , teasing him. Mark kept at it, though, looking like a spaz, and before long, the red glow stopped moving, and Mark could see bright, shining hieroglyphs.

Unfortunately, he had no idea where to begin in reading them. "Uh, Holly? Do you mean these hieroglyphs?" He pointed to them.

Holly looked away from Henry, pausing another moment out of respect of the dead, and looked to where Mark was pointing.

"What hieroglyphs? Oh, wait- I don't think that djinn can see them. Here sketch them out on this. MADECASSEE!" An instant later, Holly was holding a pad of paper and a pencil, and she handed them over to her brother.

While Mark was busily sketching, Nimrod walked slowly over to Henry's corpse and looked carefully at it. "We really ought to do something for the poor chap. I doubt that any of his family would recognize him like he is now. Very, very old... he probably died of a heart failure."

"I shall call it in. I have a very good friend who is on the police force here in Alexandria, so we will likely be able to escape questioning. Excuse me." Vidor turned away, commanding Ingrid to let go of him in Norwegian, took out his cell phone, and dialed the number for the police station nearest them, and began to speak in his perfect Arabic to whoever had answered his call.

Mark completed the last hieroglyph symbol with pride. He didn't consider himself much of an artist, especially since he'd been finishing up his first year of law school when his parents, stepmother, and stepmother's brother (Bob, remember?) had been killed in fires that had been started by Cas's birth mother, Dimme Teer. After Mark had attended all of the funerals, (four in number- he'd gone to Cas's (adoptive) parents' funeral to be polite; he really hadn't known them very well, but Cas needed the support,) Mark just didn't want to go back to school. He preferred to stay in London, and became Nimrod's cook, not that Nimrod couldn't cook for himself; it was just that Mark was better at it. However, as Mark looked at the detailed sketches of the glowing hieroglyphics, he thought that he might just have found something else he was good at. He had certainly conveyed the idea that they were glowing, and if Mark had been given a red pencil or pen or something, anything red, he would have most decidedly been able to show that they were red. But more importantly than that, Mark had created a perfect facsimile of the text on the mudbrick wall.

"I've finished," he said, and no sooner had the words exited his mouth, than the hieroglyphs flickered and spat sparks dangerously. Mark, being the only one who was able to see them, jumped out of his skin and hurriedly backed up against the wall opposite.

"What in the name of Ishtar is that noise?" Nimrod asked, sounding worried, and looking towards the unseen hieroglyphs.

"The hieroglyphics are... I think they might be vanishing!" Mark said, feeling more than a little panicked himself. And indeed, the mysterious red glow began to fade, until finally it was completely gone, the mysterious hieroglyphs gone with it.


	10. Chapter 9: A Hidden Tomb

Chapter 9: A Hidden Tomb**  
**

Vidor snapped his phone shut and looked grimly at Henry's body for a moment before addressing his companions. "Nimrod, if you would go back to the 'Lion and translate those hieroglyphs. It appears that my friend managed somehow to get himself fired, and I will definitely be questioned. However, I see no reason that the rest of you should waste time along with me. The hieroglyphs cannot wait. Once we regroup, then we can begin to worry about young Cas. All of you, go. You as well, Ingrid." Vidor knelt down beside Henry and felt for a nonexistent pulse, in order to mask Holly's fingerprints. "It would be best if they didn't know that any of us but myself was here."**  
**

Nimrod nodded. "We'll take a whirlwind. The 'Lion isn't all that far, now is it? QWERTYUIOP!" A whirlwind sprang up beneath his feet, growing slowly. He beckoned for Holly, Mark, and Ingrid to join him on the whirling funnel of air. Carefully, and trying hard not to fall over, Holly stepped up, taking her father's hand when, despite her attempt, she stumbled before regaining her balance.

Mark came next, followed by Ingrid, who seemed very quiet and scared. Holly could understand that, and silently patted the girl on the back, smiling sympathetically. Ingrid remained silent.**  
**

In a matter of seconds, Nimrod had made his whirlwind rise several hundred feet into the hot Egyptian sky, causing Holly, who disliked whirlwinds only a bit less than airplanes, in regards to her fear of heights, for the simple reason that in an airplane, Holly couldn't see the land or water below her unless she purposely looked out the window. At least in an airplane, she could forget (with the help of a charcoal pill) the fact that she was flying so high above everything in a precarious metal tube. **  
**

Holly was pulled away from her comparison of airplanes and whirlwinds when she became aware of Ingrid pulling on her sleeve.**  
**

"Yes, Ingrid? What is it?" Holly asked, noticing with strange fascination Ingrid's look of awe as she regarded Holly.

"Are you the one that everyone talks about? The only true djinn prophet ever to exist?" The small, redheaded Norwegian girl questioned her.

Holly smiled again, rather ruefully, it seemed to everyone else, and nodded. "That's what Gabriel tells me. I'm the Prophet of the Djinn, destined to do something great. I have yet to figure out what, but I've already helped save Europe once, and I bet we're going to upscale to the world now. We've got no idea what Azzy's planning."

"Who is this 'Azzy' you speak of?" Ingrid demanded, so exuberantly that Holly found herself laughing in spite of the grimness of the situation she'd just left.

Wiping a tear of mirth from her eye, Holly began to answer the child. "Well, he's-" but then broke off, thinking quickly. If Ingrid knew that Cas's own _brother _was the most evil djinn currently on the planet, then Ingrid was liable to become quite unnecessarily afraid and suspicious of Cas, and who knew what would happen then? Quickly, Holly changed trains of thought. "He's... Iblis Teer's nephew. Bad lot, all of those Ifrit. His actual name is Azazel, but I call him Azzy because... well, I don't really have a reason. I'd assume because I think it would annoy him if ever I called him that to his face. He's really truly evil, and I take small victories when I can."

Ingrid nodded, then paused. "When you at last call him that, I believe I would want to know his reaction, should it prove to be comical."

Holly grinned. "I'll be sure to tell you if it's funny, Ingrid." Then both girls became very quiet. "I'm worried about Cas," Holly confided in Ingrid.

"I remember that my mamma once told me to never worry about one who is protected by the angels, because the angels are much more powerful than us djinn could ever hope to become."

Holly nodded. "You're quite right, Ingrid. I ought not to worry about him."

* * *

Cas was panicking. "Holly? Nimrod? Anyone?" He called down from his whirlwind, and seeing no one, worried that something horrible had happened to the others. He still wasn't quite used to being in control of his very own whirlwind, and about twenty feet above the sands of the Egyptian Sahara, it began to get a little unruly. Part of it was that the whirlwind had accumulated quite a lot of desert sand during its prolonged sojourn there. Sensing that he was losing control, and not really wanting to fall twenty feet, not even into sand, Cas gently began to let it down. He only got close to halfway before the whirlwind flew completely out of control and came out from under him, making Cas fall the remaining ten feet. He wasn't really hurt, but he stood up feeling rather winded anyway.

"So, you've finally decided to come." Sneered a voice with an accent that was very decidedly from the American deep South.

"Who's there?" Cas shouted. He hadn't seen anyone just a moment ago, but now a sinister-looking, lanky, dark haired man, wearing an expensive-looking dark green suit, and had a rather curly mustache, stood in the shadows between two of the huge sand dunes. In a moment, the sinister character had closed the distance between them.

"It's only me. Really, I was under the impression that you had come to assist me, Castiel. After all, we are family." The man drawled.

Immediately, Cas tensed. "Who are you?" he asked suspiciously.

"Jirjis Ibn Rajmus. The leader of the Ifrit. I was recently made aware that your brother had planned to kill me when I was vacationing in Spain. Know anything?"

Cas shook his head firmly, ignoring the hand that Jirjis had extended. "I want nothing to do with you djinn!" He shouted. Jirjis sighed, as though Cas had disappointed him in some way.

"So it is true. Dimme Teer's lost son has grown up to be a sappy one. That's rather unfortunate, although I may even prefer it to what your brother is becoming. Quite a danger to the Ifrit, and all others, I'm sure you'll agree." Jirjis looked slyly at Cas.

"What do you want?" Cas asked, sensing that Jirjis was attempting to make Cas more inclined to listen to him. Jirjis sighed, knowing that he had been found out.

"One of these dunes is similar to what is known as a plenum wall, only it's a sand dune. Do you know what a plenum wall is, Castiel?"

Slowly, Cas shook his head. "No idea. Now what exactly does this have to do with me?"

"Dimme's old hideaway is under this plenum dune. An ancient tomb that she took a liking to, though really, it isn't much more than a hole in the ground." Jirjis explained. "As one of her closest living relatives, you're more likely to find the fake dune that my cousin created."

Cas nodded. "Ah. Well, if that's all, then I'd best be going, hadn't I? I'd hate to keep my companions waiting."

"But what about the tomb?" Jirjis shouted at Cas.

Cas turned to look the powerful Ifrit right in the eye. "Not my problem. Whatever's in there, you're not getting it. Not on my life."

"Famous last words, boy! HEMATOPHAGOUS!" Jirjis snarled.

Cas was absolutely sure that he'd be nothing more than dust in a matter of seconds, but all of a sudden, out of nowhere there came a flash of bright heavenly white light.

"Really, you've got to at least try and stay out of trouble!" Cas blinked, and saw Castiel standing beside him, grasping a strange-looking sword of fire that was glowing steadily with the bright white light of Heaven. "Right then. We'd best get you back to the others, shall we?" Castiel grabbed Cas by the elbow with his free hand, and the two were gone from the dunes with a sound like fluttering wings.

Jirjis fell to his knees in sheer disappointment. He had been so close, and now there was nothing but horrible, crushing letdown. The angels were always ruining everything.

* * *

"Yeow!" Cas shouted, landing uncomfortably on his heels in the foyer of the Golden Lion, the force of his landing sending a jolt up his spine. Castiel was now gone, and Cas felt painfully alone. That is,until he heard running footsteps rapidly approaching him from somewhere nearby.

A moment later, Baksheesh burst through a door at the far end of the foyer. "Oh! It is you, Cas. Are you all right? Where is everyone else?"

"I'm fine, and I've got no idea where the others are. I just hope that they haven't gone looking for me." Cas said to the other boy, just as the front door banged open.

"Don't worry, Cas, we haven't." Said Nimrod. "Holly, check that one off of our to-do list."

Holly grinned broadly, and ran over to give Cas a big hug, much to his surprise and that of Baksheesh. "Where have you been? Why did you leave?"

"I didn't really choose to light off to Heaven, you know. Gabriel had no idea why I teleported there." Cas tried to pry his friend's fingers away, without success.

"Gabriel? So you did see him, then? What exactly did he say?" Holly asked impatiently, releasing Cas from her deathly tight hug and allowed him to breathe for a moment or two.

"Yes. And all he said, really, was asking me how I'd managed to teleport up to heaven. Oh, and he says hi, if that's what you wanted to hear."

"Well, now, if you'd all kindly excuse me, I have some hieroglyphics to translate. Mark?" Mark offered his sketch of the hieroglyphs to Nimrod, and Nimrod took it, nodded to Baksheesh, and began mounting the stairs. "I ought to be done in about a half an hour."


	11. Chapter 10: Alexander's Lion

Chapter 10: Alexander's Lion

"There, I've finished." Nimrod announced proudly, entering the dining room where Holly, Cas, Baksheesh, Ingrid, and Femi had congregated, Vidor still not having returned from his interview with the police.

Nimrod smacked a pad of yellow legal paper down on the table, while Femi poured everyone some more tea, taking out another teacup she'd saved for Nimrod.

"What does it say?" Holly asked. "Your handwriting is horrible."

"I did that on purpose," Nimrod insisted. "We don't want just anyone to read it. I'll read my translation aloud for you." Nimrod then proceeded to clear his throat several times, until Holly gave him an impatient look. "All right, I'll begin.

_For the Prophet, a guiding light shall beam,_

_To show the way to the curs'd one's fire,_

_But beware, unwary travelers,_

_For his lion guards the curs'd one from rescue_

_The light and darkness together must destroy this _

_Lion of Alexander_."

Nimrod finished, looking a bit over-proud of his accomplishment.

Cas stood up abruptly. "Alexander's Lion? Nimrod! Now you _have_to tell us!"

"Tell us what?" Holly asked curiously, looking back and forth between Cas and Nimrod.

Nimrod crossed his arms. "It's nothing more than a fairy tale. The probability of those events actually occurring, even these days, is, to give a ballpark figure, less than one thousandth percent. Nearly impossible."

"Tell us anyway!" Cas demanded. "You've had your fun, Nimrod- you and Castiel both! Now tell us this story, please."

"Very well." Nimrod sighed, and then glanced at Mark, Femi, and Baksheesh. "I've no idea what the penalty for sharing this with mundanes is, but I suppose that we've all gotten dragged into this together, so you three can stay. Just don't go spreading this fairy story around to anyone, all right?"

The three mundanes nodded, and everyone gave Nimrod their undivided attention.

"Okay, start this fairy story of yours, dad." Holly prompted.

"All right, here I go. When Alexander the Great first came to Egypt, before he conquered it, he was initially met by a lone hermit, named Kalefe the Ruthless, who had been living in the desert. To make a long story short, Kalefe the Ruthless provided the means necessary for Alexander to conquer the whole of Egypt, and build his great empire that is still remembered today. Now, as I've mentioned before, I believe, Alexander was a full-blooded djinn, of the Marid tribe, if I'm not much mistaken. He'd gotten a taste for conquest, and Alexander, being a very clever djinn, would not be denied.

"Now, it was only after Alexander's troops had finally defeated the stronghold at Gaza- the last Egyptian stronghold to remain independent from Alexander's Empire,- that Alexander found out what Kalefe really was, and why he had really become a hermit in the first place. You see, Kalefe the Ruthless was not just a hermit, but also a powerful magus. He had been a priest at the Temple of Ra in a village that was very close to where Alexandria is now. He had left the village in order to safely develop spells to rival those of Solomon's. Alexander feared, quite sensibly, for not only himself, but also for every djinn, both good and evil, that lived in his still-growing Empire. Alexander refused to give Kalefe the Ruthless one bit of the reward that the man demanded for helping Alexander, and after he had done that, Alexander destroyed all of the magus' work, banishing him back to the desert, to wander for an eternity."

"That's a horrible thing to do!" Mark interrupted, disgusted with the long-dead djinn.

"Never mind that, Mark. What's done is done. In any case, if you would allow me to continue?"

Mark nodded, and Nimrod went on.

"Thank you, Mark. Now, Kalefe still had the means to cast a terrible spell over Alexander the Great, and immediately began weaving it. This spell was so powerfully evil, that it required that Kalefe sacrifice both body and soul- this was a spell to trap Alexander, even beyond death.

"According to the legend, Kalefe bound Alexander's spirit, what we djinn call our _Neshamah_, to the desert, doomed to reincarnate forever or until the lion that Kalefe set to guard Alexander was destroyed. If these hieroglyphics are to be believed, then the lion can only be destroyed by forces of light and shadow working together. Not only that, but there is said to be a demon guarding Alexander further."

"Wow. Kalefe really pulled out all of the stops with this one spell. He must have really had it out for poor Alexander," Holly said, "If Azazel is anything to go by, then demons must be nearly impossible to get rid of."

"That was the idea," Nimrod replied, "Of course, all of this is nothing but a fairy tale. No one, not even Solomon, the greatest magus that the world has ever seen, would be able to forcefully bind a djinn's spirit to the sands of the desert, at least, not beyond death."

"Only I think that Kalefe the Ruthless did just that," Cas was quiet, a sign that he was thinking very hard indeed. "Castiel mentioned that there was some buzz about Alexander's lion in the Spirit World, and that he was shepherding some very frightened souls lately. Hang on, I think I wrote this all down somewhere... I bet I put it in my library. I'll go get it, wait here a second!"

Cas ran upstairs, and came back moments later with his bronze oil lamp. "I'll be back in a minute or two, don't let me keep you."

Cas transubstantiated himself, slowly turning into smoke that was, Nimrod noticed with interest, not quite so black anymore, having taken on a more dark grey sort of hue.

Inside the lamp, Cas paused for a moment to admire his organization of what had once been near-total chaos, with all of the books that the angels had given to Cas strewn about the shining bronze interior of the lamp. Now, however, through Cas's hard work, (and extensive use of his djinn power,) he'd made it look like one of the old Carnegie Libraries that he'd once visited in West Virginia. Sighing, he tried to figure out where he'd left his dream journal. After quite a bit of searching in different rooms, he finally found it on an end table in one of his favourite reading rooms, a room that was directly connected to the main hall, and had a cosy fireplace that lit and warmed the space.

Cas picked up the heavy, leather-bound notebook and took it back to a section of his library up a flight of wooden stairs, past the bedroom he'd created, and into the room where he kept all of his leather-bound journals. He was using only about three at the moment, one for dreams, one for interesting happenings in his waking moments, and one for recording his inventory, as he read it. This one was what he called his 'List of Books,' and he often fell asleep in his library, right in the midst of reading one of the books.

Steeling himself for some serious research, Cas took out the other two journals he had written in thus far, sat in a comfortable armchair that stood directly next to a radiator, and opened his List, searching for some mention of Alexander the Great.

Outside of Cas's lamp, Holly turned to Nimrod and Mark, a questioning expression in her eyes.

"Has Cas ever told you what was in that lamp of his? Or at least where he got it? It's a weird design for a lamp, isn't it?"

Nimrod leaned in closer to the bronze oil lamp, putting on his gold-rimmed glasses in order to better examine it. "Yes, it is a rather odd design for a handle, I agree. It doesn't appear similar to any other lamp I've ever seen. It's not Arabian, not Chinese, not Egyptian, and certainly not European. The design is all wrong for every one of those. Very strange indeed. We shall have to see where Cas obtained this when he comes back with the information he has for us."

"I bet I have something of an idea," Holly murmured.

"What was that, my child?" Nimrod gave Holly a sideways glance.

"It might be angel-made," Holly explained, more loudly, so that she could be heard. "The detail on the handle is almost insane. And it isn't really an angel like those soppy-eyed girls in the paintings, either. This is an angel that strikes fear into your heart, even on the small-scale."

"Yes, it does, doesn't it? It's really weird." Mark said, looking intently at the ivory handle. "It almost looks a little like Gabriel, only not quite him. Like his brother, or something."

Nimrod snapped his fingers and smacked the palm of his hand against his forehead. "Of course! That's it! One of the seven archangels! If only we knew which one, then we might be able to figure out a piece of what's been going on in the big picture."

Holly was about to suggest that she could ask Gabriel, but was interrupted by Cas's reverse transubstantiation, the dark grey smoke billowing out of where the wick of the lamp would rest.

"It took me ages, but I found what I was looking for!" Cas said triumphantly, holding up a largish book entitled _Djinn Myths and Legends _for the others to see. "And you said that it was passed only by word of mouth!" Cas grinned at Nimrod, as if to say telepathically 'so there.'

Nimrod sighed. "Very well. What have you found out?"


	12. Chapter 11: Confessions to Make

Chapter 11: Confessions to Make**  
**Vidor came onto the screened patio, shutting the door behind him. "I am dreadfully sorry for the delay. It really was quite unavoidable, the police system being what it is now, particularly here in Egypt. They're notoriously inefficient."**  
"**Yes, we're aware, Vidor. Good to have you back. Here, read this translation." Nimrod tossed the yellow legal pad to Vidor, who caught it smoothly.**  
"**You'll have to tell me what it says, Nimrod. Your handwriting in quite illegible."**  
"**Later, right now Cas was just about to tell us something rather important. Go on, Cas."**  
"**Right. Anyway, as I was saying, the hieroglyphs make reference to 'the prophet,' and we can only assume that that's Hol here. Anyway, the book says that Alexander has a series of what it calls 'vessels'- I bet those are the reincarnations of him, all of the people who his fire was bound to... they probably all lived in a desert somewhere. It doesn't really seem to limit Alexander's spirit to just the Egyptian desert."**  
"**Great, so now we know that Alexander's vessel could be wandering around in any desert, on any continent. And that gets us where, exactly?" Holly didn't sound particularly pleased with the information that Cas had dug up.**  
"**Yeah, but I'm not finished. Hol, this finding thing obviously has something to do with you, so try to think. Have you seen any weird or unnatural lights lately?"**  
**Holly shook her head. "Nope. Not unless you're counting electrical lights, but I don't think that you are. Y'know, it might help if Nimrod told me why he brought us to Alexandria in the first place. I suspect that, since he seems not to have realized that the fairy story that he just told us was fact, that there was another reason." She looked sideways at her father, trying to get the message across that she wasn't about to give up.**  
"**I'd like to, Holly, but it isn't my choice anymore whether or not to tell you. Mark, you said you'd be the one to say something, so now is the time to say it. It is time to level with your sister, Mark."**  
**Mark sighed, making Holly even more impatient to hear the truth. "Fine. Holly, we came to Alexandria in search of Azazel. There, are you satisfied?"**  
"**No, no I'm not. Nimrod, there has to have been another reason that you chose Alexandria. It wasn't just a shot in the dark, was it?" Holly turned to her father impatiently. "Well, was it? It's got something to do with Gabriel, I just know it. You hate to admit it, but I think that you don't remember how he looked in the twenties, because you weren't paying attention! Don't lie, dad, I was there! So, tell me truly, how did you recognize him at the terminal? I didn't tell you that it was him. Spill!" Holly was standing by now, absolutely determined to get the whole truth out of her family. Nimrod raised his hands in surrender.**  
"**Very well, Holly, I'll tell you. Sit down, please." Holly sat, and Nimrod put his hands down. "A few weeks ago, Gabriel visited me in a dream. He told me that in order to get a step closer to defeating the forces of evil, I would have to take you three, Holly, Cas, and Mark, to Alexandria. When I asked him why, he wouldn't say. He simply vanished, and was replaced by a large black raven that screeched a single word at me. Then I woke up." Nimrod explained.**  
"**Do you remember his exact wording? Gabriel, I mean. We'll get to the raven later." Holly looked intensely curious now, rather than impatient. **  
**Nimrod glanced around before answering. Vidor and Femi were talking in low voices, Cas was busily poring over the book he had taken out of his lamp library, but Baksheesh, Ingrid, Mark, and Holly were listening with heightened interest. "I believe that Gabriel said something along the lines of: 'If you stay in London, you place yourself and your family in danger. Go, instead, to Alexander's city, where trouble is brewing in the guise of a flaxen-haired boy. You shall have need of the Prophet, the human, and the one who chose Good.' Beyond that, I can't remember. However, Gabriel appeared exactly as he was in the airport terminal."**  
"**And the raven? What did the raven say- Nevermore?"**  
"**No. The word was longer, and far stranger. I don't believe that I'd ever encountered it ever before in my life, which is particularly odd. It sounded almost made up."**  
"**Like half of the German words I've ever heard." Holly joked, happy now that she knew what was going on.**  
"**Could it be this?" Cas asked, and began to read something out of the book. It was a strange word, and certainly unlike anything that anyone at the table had ever heard before. But it was definitely recognizable as a word.**  
"**Where did you get that? That is exactly the word the raven spoke in my dream." Nimrod was staring at Cas, and, like everyone else on the patio, looked terrified.**  
"**Hm? Oh, it's written in the margin right here. Look." Cas pushed the large book of djinn legends across the table for Nimrod to see the symbols scrawled in the otherwise blank margin next to the word 'lion.' **  
"**This is most irregular," Nimrod said, still seeming a little alarmed, but hiding it better. "I've never seen such writing. How were you able to read it, Cas?"**  
"**Oh, Enochian? Castiel taught me. I guess you could say I learned it in my sleep." Cas shared a quick grin with Holly at the joke, and then he continued. "Anyway, that word right there means 'power' or 'might.' I don't know why it is where it is, but Enochian only has around 1000 words. Fewer, if you get rid of all the names of all the angels."**  
"**Enochian, hm? Very strange, indeed. The language of angels..." Nimrod murmured to himself.

Holly rolled her eyes and directed the discussion away from the mystic language. "Yeah, that's great for you, Cas. Anyway, while you were looking around in your library, Mark, dad, and I were wondering where you got the lamp from, and who's on the handle. Nimrod says that it's one of the seven archangels."

"My lamp? That's a weird thing to go and ask. It was a gift from Castiel, originally, but then I dropped it in my dream, and Gabriel brought it back to me, and when I woke up, there it was on my bedside table, just full of books. It was like an ocean, before I organized it. But now I've made it to look like this awesome old bookstore I visited a couple times when I was a kid. It used to be one of the Carnegie Libraries, but it got turned into a bookstore back in the eighties. Anyway, I should put my book back, and we should all try to figure this stuff out some more. I can wander through my stacks some more, if you think it might help, Nimrod."**  
****"**Yes, do that, and while you're busy, I can see what else I know about Alexander or perhaps research on Mr. Henry Peters. It's entirely likely that we will be working well into the early hours of morning."**  
****"**Then let's not waste any time, shall we?"**  
**At Cas's words, Nimrod nodded, and retired to his hotel room. Cas, taking up his bronze lamp, followed suit, leaving the rest of them to try and figure out what to do for the hours that the two djinn were researching Alexander the Great.**  
****"**How can we help?" Femi asked Holly, standing up and collecting all of the now abandoned teacups. Holly thought for a moment.**  
****"**Well, if I can find some small animal to possess, then I could practice my djinn power. I suppose that I could always just create a mouse, or something, and use that." Holly mused, looking vaguely at the ceiling. "I'll try to do that for the rest of the afternoon."**  
**Mark shrugged. "Knock yourself out, kiddo. Just don't expect me to supervise you: I have a book to read." Mark stood up, thanked Femi for the tea, and announced that he was going up to his room. "It's too hot in Egypt for me. Some people might be able to stand it, but not I." He grinned, and gave Holly a pat on the head before going back inside the pension.**  
**Several hours later, close to midnight, Holly was exhausted. She'd tried, and failed, many times, to muster the strength of mind to create even the smallest of mice, but found that she was far too distracted to perform any work of djinn power.**  
**"Screw this," she muttered finally, and began to search in the wardrobe for her red silk pyjamas that she had carelessly thrown in it that morning. **  
**A knock on her door startled her into banging her head on the relatively low doorframe of the wardrobe. "Ouch!" she yelped, rubbing the back of her head, and backing out of the wardrobe more carefully. "Who is it?" Holly called, hastily retying her hijab.**  
****"**It's just me, kiddo." Mark called back through the door. Holly sighed, and opened the door to talk to her brother. **  
****"**What is it, Mark?" she asked, not needing feign sleepiness. "It's almost midnight, and I'm super tired. What do you want?"**  
****"**I was wondering- what kind of prophecies do you get?"**  
**This was so unlike Mark, who usually liked to pretend that Holly didn't have any special powers at all, that Holly was taken aback.**  
****"**Come in and sit down," she said, and pointed towards one of two leather armchairs that was situated beside the fireplace, which had a lit fire in the grate. Mark didn't even complain about how hot it was in Holly's room, merely did as he was told and sat in the leather armchair.**  
****"**So, are you going to tell me or not?" He asked.**  
**Holly shrugged, still mystified, as she sat down in the other armchair next to her brother. "I will, but why do you want to know? You've never taken an interest before."**  
****"**To tell the truth, I'm not entirely sure myself. It might be because I saw Gabriel with my own two eyes for the first time, it might be that I've always been curious about this, just afraid to ask. I think it's a mixture of both, come to think of it."**  
**Holly nodded slowly. "Well, the dreams vary, as dreams do. I've classified three main types, though. There's type A, in which Gabriel appears and we chat, type B, in which I'm the onlooker to something- I've been having lots of those recently- and then there's type C, which often make little or no sense at all. They're usually little snippets of children singing nonsensical rhymes and glimpses of dark, shadowy figures. Type C is the scariest, without a doubt. I have a strange feeling that I'm the observer then, too, but I have no idea what I'm observing."**  
****"**Type C does sound disturbing. Are you sure that it's not just normal dreams you're having?" Mark asked his little sister, not without considerable concern.**  
****"**Sometimes I actually dream. But I can always tell the difference between dreams and prophecies. For one thing, I always remember the prophecies, as if every detail gets etched into my head. I can feel things in the prophecies, too. I can feel a hot fire, or wet rain. Gabriel told me that it's because I can blur the line between dreams and reality, whatever that means."**  
****"**Hmm..." Mark said thoughtfully. "Sounds a bit dangerous to me. I mean, what if you end up having a very real nightmare that you can't escape from? The mind can play such terrible tricks on you sometimes."**  
****"**About that," Holly said, smiling now, and pushing the disturbing memories of the type C prophecies out of her head, "I think I've figured something rather important out. It's about why Gabriel has taken such an interest in me. I mean, I'm just a djinn girl, and a pretty young one at that. Last summer, Daemiel told me that most angels wouldn't bother helping me, but he was because I was the prophet of the djinn. He told me that calling upon Michael the archangel would be best, but if I called Gabriel, he'd be more likely to respond. I think I've figured out why that is!"**  
****"**Well," Mark said impatiently. "Don't just sit there, tell me why!"**  
****"**I think that Gabriel's my guardian angel."**  
**Mark fell out of his chair.


	13. Chapter 12: Piecing Things Together

Chapter 12: Piecing Things Together

"Yeow!" Mark complained mightily as he picked himself up off of the floor. "For a carpeted floor, that's awfully hard stuff to land on!"

Holly shushed him. "Shut up, Mark. Everyone else is probably asleep!"

"Sorry, kiddo. I thought I heard you say that Gabriel was your guardian angel." Mark whispered.

Holly nodded. "That's what I suspect, at any rate."

Mark shook his head. "Who do you think you are? Gabriel is a powerful archangel!"

"And so? What's your point?" Holly arched one of her eyebrows. "Are you trying to tell me that I'm not important enough?"

Mark became flustered. "No, it's just that-"

"Mark, never mind. Just never mind. I-" Holly's interruption was interrupted by Cas, quietly knocking on her door.

"Holly? Are you in there? It's me. Open up, please."

Holly rose, in rather a huff, and opened it. "Hi, Cas. What is it?"

Cas glanced over at Mark. "You might not be especially pleased to hear this, but we have to go back out to the desert. Tonight. And I can't find Nimrod!"

"No." Mark said, rising from his armchair. "Absolutely not. Anyway, how are you going to get out there? You two can't drive, and I'm certainly not driving you."

"Okay, if you really don't want to come, I guess you don't have to. We can take a whirlwind!" Cas said brightly.  
Mark was inclined to believe that Cas was bluffing. "You don't know how to conjure up a whirlwind! I would know if Nimrod had taught you."

Cas nodded. "Oh, Nimrod didn't teach me. Bart did. Anyway, Hol, are you coming?"

Holly's interest was sparked by the unfamiliar name. "Who's Bart?" she asked, only a little suspiciously.

Cas, at once, realized his mistake in mentioning the evil djinn, and tried to avoid a conflict. "Bart's just another djinn, like you." he said evasively, but Holly sensed that he wasn't telling the entire truth. Rather than argue with him, for she trusted her best friend's judgement, Holly merely shrugged.

"Okay, let's go." she said. At this, Mark felt obliged to place himself between her and the door.

"You're not going anywhere, Holly. Not if I have anything to say about it!" He snarled at her. Holly regarded her brother with faint amusement, trying to decide the best way to pass him.

"And just what are you going to do about it?" she asked, slowly turning into white smoke which swirled past him and out into the hall. "I'm a djinn, in case you'd forgotten. And this is anything but a cool climate."

Mark swore under his breath in Arabic, then seemed to decide something. "Fine. If I can't stop you, then I may as well go with you to keep you out of trouble."

Holly smiled as she returned to her solid form. "Great. I'll leave a note for Nimrod. Just a second."

"Maybe I should add to that note when you're done," Cas said nervously, hoping that they weren't going to be held up by someone. Holly nodded, then went back into her room to fetch a pen and paper. Quickly scrawling the note, her handwriting resembled little more than fluid, looped lines, which gave Cas a headache to try and read. After Holly passed him her fountain pen, Cas added a little bit about how he had met Jirjis Ibn Rajmus in the desert, and how Jirjis had been searching for Dimme's secret hideaway. Cas also mentioned that they would probably be back by the next afternoon, and that they'd be fine.

Holly searched through her pockets, and finally gave up and conjured a roll of tape with her djinn power. Taping the note to the door, Holly made doubly sure that the note was properly affixed before she went over to one of the curtained windows, threw back the drapes, unlocked the window sash, and opened the window. Cool night air rushed into Holly's warm room, making Mark sigh involuntarily with relief. Holly ignored him and poked her head out of the window.

"Nice night," she commented. "Looks like perfect weather for flying. Cas, if you'd kindly do the honors?" Holly stepped aside to allow Cas to climb onto the windowsill, where he summoned all of his strength of mind, and dug his heels against the air outside.

Within a moments, a brisk breeze ruffled the three's hair, and gently pushed the door closed with a soft _click!_Holly almost screamed when she saw Cas drift off of the windowsill and float in midair outside.

"Got it!" he whispered, rather pleased with himself. "Come on, you two!"

Mark, muttering darkly, carefully climbed out of Holly's window, and onto Cas's whirlwind, relaxing only when he was certain that

Cas wasn't about to send him plummeting to the ground. Holly, however, was less sure of this plan than she had been a few moments ago. The reality of stepping out of a second-story window onto thin air was beginning to sink in. Shakily, Holly climbed out onto her windowsill, trying not to look down, and immediately shut her eyes tightly closed with fear, her heart beating in double-time. Bracing herself for a fall, she took one step off of the sill, and, finding her weight supported by something very soft, brought her other foot off as well.

"Are you okay, kiddo?" Mark asked, noticing Holly's rapid breathing. Holly nodded, and swallowed, then looked over at Cas.

"Let's get going, then!" she said, the glint of adventure shining in her eyes once more. Cas nodded, and the whirlwind rose up and headed west, towards the desert, and towards the spot where Cas had met Jirjis Ibn Rajmus, the head of the Ifrit.

* * *

Nimrod stretched after he had transubstantiated out of Mr. Rakshasas' lamp, having done quite a lot of research on Alexander the Great.

Glancing at the clock on the wall, Nimrod saw that it was almost 4:00 in the morning, and decided that he really ought to get some sleep. He'd tell Holly, Cas, and Mark what he'd found in the morning. Something kept bothering him though, a nagging feeling that Nimrod had forgotten something rather important. It was a feeling he'd had many times over the years, but had never grown accustomed to. Now, however, he was quite certain that it had something to do with his daughter. He heard a soft click from out in the hallway, as of a door closing, and stood up from the uncomfortable wooden chair he'd seated himself in directly after his transubstantiation. He opened his own door and poked his head out into the hallway. He looked right and left, but saw no one in the hallway. However, a white piece of paper taped to the door of room 26, with his name written on the outside. Nimrod allowed his own door to fall shut behind him, and went over to investigate the paper.

Written in a hasty scrawl, Nimrod had to squint to make out the words. His first thought was that Holly had written that way on purpose, just to get back at him for the earlier illegible translation of the hieroglyphics, but it occurred to Nimrod that if that was Holly's aim, then she could have done a much better job at it. Finally, Nimrod had made out the last few words of Holly's note, and read it back over to himself, growing more and more anxious by the second.

"Dear dad," the note began, "Cas, Mark, and I are going out to the desert, be back soon, don't worry. Cas said he found something out there, so we're going to go check it out. He said he couldn't find you, otherwise we would have told you ourselves. See you later, Holly."

There was more writing, beneath Holly's. After about a minute of staring at it, Nimrod recognized it as Cas's handwriting, although Cas seemed to be in much less of a hurry than Holly. Either that, or Cas had made time to write legibly.

Nimrod read this part silently, and knew that now was a time to panic, if ever there was one. Without hesitating, Nimrod stuffed the note in one of his pockets, and charged back into his room to grab Mr. Rakshasas' lamp and his Skeleton Key off of the work desk, then, with just as much nervous energy, he rushed down the stairs and out the door without further ado.

When he'd gotten out into the cool air, Nimrod shivered a little bit, but ignored the weather and summoned his power to create a whirlwind. Now it would be a matter of finding them in time.

* * *

While Holly had been given a superior intellect, because of a wish her brother had made for her behalf, it still took her awhile to put two and two together. All through the whirlwind ride, which, to Cas's credit, was very smooth, and the whirlwind he'd conjured only fluctuated but once, Holly was trying to add up everything she'd learned thus far. Some of it made sense, other bits, not so much, and some were just completely out there.

Doubtless, Azazel was plotting something terrible. Something, according to Cas, that had something to do with finding a powerful, and of course missing, weapon. Gabriel had shown her that it had something to do with the hieroglyphs that Henry Peters had found, and the hieroglyphs had pointed towards Alexander's Lion, which, in turn, had pointed to Alexander the Great. It was all very strange, Holly decided, just when Cas had the whirlwind touch down between two enormous sand dunes.

Looking at one sand dune, then the other, Holly raised an eyebrow. "Why are we here, Cas?" she asked, glancing at her best friend almost as though he'd gone mad. Cas grinned, and walked back and forth.

"One of these dunes is a fake, and the other is real." he said, a manic glint in his eye. "If we figure out which one is which, then we might have a better chance of figuring out what Azazel and Dimme are up to!"

Cas didn't exactly say how finding out which dune was fake, and which one was real, but all the same, something clicked inside Holly's head. She glanced at her brother, who was shivering in the cold night air.

Kalefe the Ruthless had been a human, and therefore not as keen on living in a desert as a djinn would be. This led Holly to suppose that he must have some sort of tent, or something, but she remembered reading, upside-down from Cas's book, that Kalefe the Ruthless had appeared before Alexander without any belongings, and quite out of nowhere. As teleportation was out of the question, Holly turned to the only other possible solution: Kalefe had some secret way of getting around, probably by way of secret, underground caves.


	14. Chapter 13: Ghosts

Chapter 13: Ghosts

A terrible rumbling, grating sound came from beneath their feet, shaking the earth and causing Holly, Cas, and Mark to lose their footing and collapse onto the shaking sand.

"What's going on?" Holly shouted over the noise. She tried to stand up, and her feet flew out from underneath her again.

"No idea!" Mark yelled back.

"It feels like an earthquake!" Cas called, his voice sounding just as wobbly as the earth below.

As suddenly as it had begun, the earthquake stopped. Holly stood on shaking feet, and took a step forward, squinting at the shimmering blue outline of some sort of animal that was beginning to take shape before their eyes. A low, guttural growling came from the still-blurry glowing animal, growing slowly into a full-blown roar.

Gradually, the image sharpened until Holly could identify the animal as a ghostly lion, its nearly-transparent mane made of straggly grizzles that were raised threateningly. The lion turned around until it faced Holly, and, advancing upon her, separated her from her two companions.

"Holly!" Cas shouted, and attempted to dash over to help his friend, but with a swipe of its ghostly blue paw, the Lion batted Cas away as though he was a child's toy, and Cas landed with a thump on the face of one of the sand dunes.

"I think that maybe you ought to keep your distance," Holly called nervously. "I can handle it! MADECASSEE!"

A brick wall surrounded the lion, and beyond the wall, a circle of crackling orange flames did the same. Holly held her breath as the lion gave another mighty roar, and simply walked through the wall and the fire, proving Holly's earlier idea that since it could throw Cas so far away, then it couldn't walk through walls or fire without getting at least a little bit hurt quite wrong. Her throat tightened with fear and she took a few steps back as the lion continued to advance.

"Holly," Mark warned his sister tensely.

"Yes, Mark, I see it. Er, Cas? If you've got any ideas for me, now would be a great time to voice them!"

Cas only moaned in reply, leaving Holly to look hopefully at Mark. All Mark could do was shrug helplessly and call for help. Holly sighed, and joined in, hoping against hope that the lion wouldn't pounce on her. She didn't want to think about what would happen if it did.

A second or two after Holly had begun shouting, another hazy blue form began to appear, right beside her. Startled, Holly backed away, hoping that it wasn't another lion.

"What's that?" Mark yelled at her, his face becoming even paler in the moonlight.

As the new blue form began to take on a shape, Holly squinted, while still backing slowly away from the lion. "I think it's a person!" she reported, and indeed, a moment later, the image of a man, clad in what appeared to be silvery ancient Greek armor, including a plumed helmet, and wielding a very sharp-looking ghostly spear and shield appeared. The man darted into the lion's path, drawing the animal's attention away from Holly.

"Get out of this place, my child!" The man muttered to her, in a very familiar British accent.

"Dad?" Holly gasped, and the ghost of Adam Coomes turned halfway to give his adopted daughter a wink.

"Now leave!" He said, and began to drive the ghost lion backwards, away from Holly, Mark, and Cas.

Holly took a few steps backwards herself, and almost tripped in the sand. A few more, and she did trip. However, rather than falling and landing in the soft desert sand, Holly continued to fall, for the ground underneath her feet had given way, revealing a somewhat large hole, about four feet in diameter.

However, Mark really didn't care how large the hole was, he just knew that Holly was in grave danger, and Mark had to act right away.

"Holly!" He shouted, causing Cas to twitch a little bit in his dazed stupor, and Mark began to run. There was no time to go around the fighting pair of ghosts, so Mark merely jumped onto the huge cat's back and vaulted off, over his dead father.

"Good luck to you, Malek!" Mr. Coomes shouted over his shoulder, even as Mark dove to reach his little sister, lost his balance, and went tumbling down into the hole right after her.

* * *

Nimrod saw two glowing figures in the desert below him, and figured that Holly, Mark, and Cas had something to do with it. As quietly and unobtrusively as he could manage, Nimrod touched down behind one of two enormous sand dunes. Warily, Nimrod approached the pair of ghosts, one of which was a lion, and who appeared to be fighting with the Greek soldier ghost. With a final thrust of his spear that would have proved fatal if the lion were alive, the soldier fell to his knees in defeat.

Nimrod tensed, expecting the lion to pounce on the fallen soldier at any moment, but instead, the ghostly lion completely ignored the man, choosing instead to brush past the soldier to inspect what appeared, from Nimrod's vantage point, to be a smallish hole in the sand.  
Curious now, Nimrod began to approach cautiously. "Excuse me," he called to the soldier in fluent Greek, "But what are you doing all the way out here in the desert?"

The bedraggled ghost looked at Nimrod for the first time, and it was a look of unrivaled confusion. "What did you say?" the ghost asked, in a distinctive London accent. "Sorry, but I don't speak Greek."

"Then what on Earth are you doing wearing Greek armor?" Nimrod asked rather abruptly, reverting to English. The ghost looked down at himself, and shook his head.

"No idea, really. The others told me that the Lion only responds to one who is wearing Alexander's armor."

"And how did you get Alexander's armor?" Nimrod asked the ghost.

The ghost shrugged. "Hephaestion said that I could borrow it after he heard that I knew some djinn that could help. I am Adam Coomes, if I didn't mention it before." Mr. Coomes took of his plumed helmet and nodded amiably,waiting politely for Nimrod to introduce himself.

Nimrod nodded, trying to place where he'd seen Adam before. "I am Nimrod Godwin. I'm a djinn myself."

"Oh, then perhaps you know of my daughter Holly and her friend Cas. They are both djinn, as I've found out since I died a few months ago."

Nimrod's eyes widened as he realized that he'd seen Mr. Coomes' picture in the newspaper several times last summer as the news of the terrible string of New York fires that had killed six people had spread. One of those six people was the very ghost that was floating, a few inches above the sandy ground, directly in front of Nimrod.

"You're Mark's father, aren't you." It was more of an accusation than a question, but Adam Coomes nodded proudly.

"Yes, indeed I am. Although his actual name is Malek, not Mark. He's just gone by Mark ever since we moved to New York. Now how do you know my son?"

"He's my cook, in London, at least. Holly is my daughter by blood, and the djinn that entrusted her into your care was my wife, Alexandra. Cas lives with us as well- I've adopted him, as far as the law is concerned."

Adam grinned, and bowed deeply to Nimrod. "I am very pleased to meet you, Nimrod Godwin."

Nimrod glanced around him, searching for signs of his daughter, and spotted one of Cas's leather-strapped flip-flops lying abandoned near the other dune. "Yes, likewise, I'm sure, Mr. Coomes. Why did you come out here and fight that er... lion over there?"

Adam followed Nimrod's gaze towards the ghost lion, who was pawing at the hole and mewling pitifully, as though it was a small kitten being deprived of a toy.

"I had to. Your wife Alexandra made me promise to always keep Holly safe from danger. I had thought that perhaps death would free me from that promise, but it seems not."

"Did the lion attack them?" Nimrod asked, already knowing the answer, but still he inhaled sharply when Adam nodded. Nimrod looked again at the hole that the ghostly lion was still pawing at.

"Yes, Holly fell down there. I wouldn't worry about her, though. She is watched over by angels- even I know this. And angels always protect those that they are watching over."

Nimrod nodded vaguely, and started over to the other sand dune, and picked up Cas's shoe, trying to find another trace of the foolish young djinn.

Rounding the face of the dune, Nimrod saw no trace of Cas, Holly, or Mark,, apart from Cas's other shoe.

"Cas?" Nimrod called into the dim moonlight, and received a faint moan in reply. A moment later, Cas stood up shakily, emerging from where he had lain, so covered with sand that Nimrod hadn't noticed him before then.

Cas coughed, spitting out some desert sand, and brushing more off of his t-shirt and out of his hair. "Nimrod?" He asked, squinting past the sand that had gotten into his green eyes, making them water painfully.

"Cas! Are you hurt at all?"

Cas coughed some more, smiled weakly, and shook his head.

Nimrod, now convinced that Cas was just fine, smacked him full across the face.


	15. Chapter 14: Falling

Chapter 14: Falling**  
**

Holly was falling so fast that she couldn't keep her eyes open, so she missed the flash of brilliant white light that momentarily lit up the pit that she and her brother had tripped into. Mark didn't miss it though, and shielded his eyes against it, while at the same time trying to reach out and grasp his sister's hand. He'd just managed to grab Holly's left hand and squeeze it comfortingly, when the light came again, once more flooding the pit with its white brilliance. Less than a second later, the two landed with a thump on a dusty brick road. Holly felt hot air seep into her bones, warming her and giving her courage enough to open her eyes to see what had happened. She blinked when bright sunlight hit her, and she wistfully remembered her sunglasses back in her room at the Golden Lion. Even as she remembered her sunglasses, she felt a slight pressure on her head, and reached up to see what it was. **  
**

A pair of large, cats eye, red plastic rimmed sunglasses came loose from her hair, which had been styled in a very comely short bouncy sort of style, with two red ribbons. Her red hijab was missing, and the clothes she had been wearing in 2012 had been replaced by a simple short-sleeved cherry red dress with a modest collar, and a full flouncy skirt, underneath which she wore a few layers of frilly white crinoline. Fascinated, Holly stuck one of her feet out in front of her to examine her shoes. Made of red patent leather, the Mary Janes that she now wore with clean white ankle socks made Holly smile. If there was one thing that the angels remembered about her, it was her favourite colour.**  
**

Holly, gathering from the way she was dressed that it must be sometime in the 1950's, looked over at Mark. He was standing shakily and blinking against the sun, not seeming to notice that his jeans and t-shirt had been replaced by a tan suit, complete with dark brown tie, and on his head was a matching tan fedora.**  
**

He looked over at his little sister, looking panicked. "Where are we?" he asked worriedly. "What's happening? And what are you wearing?"**  
**

Holly laughed and twirled, showing off her full skirt. "You like it? I'm pretty sure that Gabriel picked it out for me. Anyway, we should see if we can find him!"**  
**

"Who?" Mark asked, but Holly was already gone, looking for Gabriel or another familiar face. The road, however, seemed deserted.

"Come on, Mark. Let's follow the road." Holly began to skip down the dirt road, kicking up dust for Mark to walk through.

After following the brick road for about a quarter hour, Holly began to recognize where they were. "I think we might be in India,"

"What makes you say that?" puffed Mark, who hadn't caught up with Holly yet, for he felt incredibly lethargic from the heat, and his misery was intensified by the tan suit.

Holly laughed a little bit, and swept her arm in a broad gesture, indicating that Mark should look at the surroundings. Mark caught up with her, and did as was directed.

They had reached the outskirts of a large square, lined with shops and thronging with dark-skinned Indians. There were several who seemed to be vendors, selling everything from cups of curry to wide-brimmed straw hats.

A woman selling straw bonnets came up to them and tried to sell Holly one of the hats. Holly told her as politely as possible, in perfect Hindi, to push off.

Mark looked at Holly with newfound wonder. "When did you learn Hindi?" he asked, and Holly shrugged.

"Last summer I made myself fluent in at least 20 languages with my power. It's great- now I don't have to work on my Arabic anymore!" Holly smiled happily as she remembered how pleased she'd been with her new linguistic abilities. "I can fix it so you're fluent in Arabic, too, if you wish." she grinned at Mark. Mark smiled back, but shook his head.

"I'm good, thanks. Hey, wait a minute- is that...?" Mark squinted across the square at an Englishman in a strawberry red suit who was speaking loudly to an elderly Indian gentleman dressed in complete white.

"It is," Holly said, as though she had read her brother's mind. "come on, let's go say hello!"  
Holly took Mark by the forearm and dragged him across the square, avoiding would-be salespeople, and making a beeline for the two men.

"Hi, Nimrod!" Holly called, and the Englishman, who was wearing a bright cherry-red suit and matching tie, gave a start and turned around. When he saw Holly and Mark, he looked delighted.

"Holly! Malek!" he boomed, sounding exactly as he did in 2012. "How nice to see you again!"

Holly and Mark exchanged a look. "Again?" Mark asked cautiously. Nimrod nodded buoyantly.

"Of course! Why, we saw each other just last year! This is Mr. Rakshasas, as you might remember."

"Er... I might have told you this before, but sometimes things don't happen to us in the right order. I'm sorry, Mr. Rakshasas, but this is the first time that... er... _Malek _and I have met you in our timeline."

The elderly Indian gentleman nodded politely. "Time is a queer journey, right enough, and one that's different for all of us."

Holly was shocked to hear that he had a distinctively Irish accent. She tried not to stare, and partially succeeded. It was Mark who broached the subject of Mr. Rakshasas' accent first.

"Pardon me, sir, but how is it that you have an Irish accent?"

Both Mr. Rakshasas and Nimrod chuckled a little bit, seeming to know something that both Holly and Mark did not.

"Mr. Rakshasas learned all of his English from Irish television during his fifty-year incarceration in a milk bottle." Nimrod explained kindly.

"Speaking of which, I'm thinking it might be best to get back to my lamp. There wasn't anything you needed me out here for, was there, Nimrod?" When Nimrod shook his head, Mr. Rakshasas began to surreptitiously turn to white smoke and slowly sink into a brass lamp that Nimrod held for a moment after all the smoke had vanished, and then place in his pocket.

"So, to what do I owe the pleasure of this particular visit?" Nimrod asked, beginning to walk away from where he had been standing, and gesturing for Holly and Mark to follow. Holly took long strides to match Nimrod's, and, glancing back at Mark, who looked miserable from the heat, decided to ask a question that might make Mark listen to her more closely in the future.

"First I'd like for you to tell us what the date is, if you would, Nimrod."

Nimrod also glanced back at Mark, favoring him with a vaguely sympathetic look. "It is the seventh of September, 1955, and we're in Calcutta, India. Now, would you like to get some curry? It's nearly time for lunch, and I'm ravenously hungry. I know of a curry house that serves the most wonderfully spicy _phal_."

"As long as you keep in mind that Malek is only a mundane- none of your twenty-one pepper _vasuki _for him." Holly smiled, wondering vaguely where Gabriel was.

Her question was answered the instant they entered the Siraj-ud-Daula Curry House, with Mr. Rakshasas back outside of his lamp. Gabriel was seated at a table for six, all by himself, and upon seeing them enter the curry house, he waved them over.  
Nimrod, Mr. Rakshasas, and Mark paused when they saw the angel, who was, as usual, dressed in various shades of cream, and was clasping his carved, ram's head cane in his right hand. However, his long hair had been cut neatly, somehow making it curlier and even more unruly than it had looked when it had come down to his shoulders.

Holly, in contrast to her brother and the other djinn, walked straight over and gave Gabriel a huge, relieved hug.

"I figured that you would come here," Gabriel told her, even as the others began to approach cautiously. "Now, let's enjoy some of the delicious _phal_, and then I can get you and your brother, and myself back to the future."

"So you did bring us here!" Holly whispered triumphantly. "Why?"

Gabriel shrugged. "You'd fallen into a booby trap set by that human a long, long time ago. If I'd waited another second, you and your brother Malek would have been smashed to bits."

Mark gulped quietly, suddenly appreciating their narrow escape. "Thank you, Gabriel." He bowed stiffly to the angel, but Gabriel waved him away.

"Quit it. People see you bowing to me, they'll assume that I'm either an angel or a djinn, and therefore show me ridiculous amounts of mostly false respect. Please, spare me the trouble. I don't like false respect."

A young waiter came over to their table, and, upon recognizing Mr. Rakshasas, grinned broadly. "How many orders of _vasuki_, Mr. Rakshasas?"

Mr. Rakshasas looked at Gabriel, who nodded, and then at Mark, who shook his head under Nimrod's prompting.

"Four, please, and one order of the regular _phal_. Thank you." Mr. Rakshasas nodded politely to the waiter as he hurried back to the kitchen to relay their order to the cook.

"Now, Gabriel, tell me. Why 1955?" Holly gave the angel a steely look, clearly conveying that she wouldn't accept anything less than what she viewed to be the truth.

Gabriel just shrugged. "I just watched _Back to the Future _the other day. 1955 was on my mind." Nodding sagely, Gabriel spared a glance at Nimrod and Mr. Rakshasas. "You'll understand in about thirty years."

Nimrod nodded back, taking his confusion in stride. "Doubtless we shall."

Gabriel reached into his jacket pocket and drew out a silver pocket watch, engraved with a flock of sheep being protected from a wolf by a shepherd who seemed to be beating the wolf with his crook. "It's nearly time to go, you two. It won't do for us to be late, you know."

"Can't you just take us back to whatever time you please?" Holly asked, somewhat puzzled.

Gabriel shrugged. "I don't like to leave my charges out of their proper time frame for too long without a specific purpose. Right now, the purpose has been served and I see no reason to remain any longer, apart from perhaps waiting for the _vasuki _to come- ah, there it is now. Eat quickly, you two!"


	16. Chapter 15: Better Judgement

Chapter 15: Better Judgement

"_What_," Cas spluttered, "was that for?"

"For being a complete and utter idiot, that's what it was for!" Nimrod replied angrily. "Jirjis Ibn Rajmus is an extremely dangerous djinn, and will tell all sorts of lies to get what he wants from you. I thought that you had better judgement than to go traipsing off into the desert without me or at least Vidor with you! And dragging Holly and Mark along with you- what were you thinking?"

Cas couldn't help but feel guilty, even though he was determined to remain angry at Nimrod for the unnecessary violence. "You were nowhere to be found, and I had to act fast. We did leave you a note."

"I know! How do you think I knew about Jirjis?" Nimrod said, now a little calmer. "Now we have to find Holly and Mark, and you'd better hope that they're still alive instead of smashed into pancakes at the bottom of that pit!"

Nimrod turned back to the ghost of Adam Coomes, ending the conversation with Cas before Cas could reply. Coughing some more, Cas shrugged to himself and continued trying to remove all the sand from his face, hands, hair, and clothes, after quietly taking his shoes out of Nimrod's grasp.  
The lion, who had been mewling at the edge of the pit for some time now, stood abruptly and turned to face Nimrod, Cas, and Adam, licking its chops as though it was hungry.

"I'd watch myself if I were you," Adam murmured, drifting between the djinn and the ghostly lion. "It seems to have given up on Holly and Mark."

And so it had. Cas could see the lion's ghostly muscles tense underneath its nearly transparent shimmering blue pelt, and knew, intuitively, that it was preparing to pounce. Before it could, however, Adam drew out a heavy-looking ghostly broadsword and began to hack at the lion, never once missing his mark. The lion roared mightily at Mr. Coomes, making the ground beneath their feet tremble, and almost causing Cas to lose his balance again.

"Can't you do something?" Cas shouted to Nimrod over the din that had ensued, and Nimrod spared a glance before shaking his head.

"Djinn do not have power over ghosts, Cas. It's right there in the _Baghdad Rules_."

Cas looked about desperately, wishing that something would take the lion away from the ghost Cas had just then recognized. He wondered vaguely if angels could get rid of ghosts, and then recalled what Castiel had said about 'shepherding souls,' and knew in an instant that they could.

However, before Cas had time to call out for help from his angelic allies, something singularly fascinating and a little frightening (at least, to Nimrod it was singularly fascinating, to Cas it was just weird and scary,) happened. A brilliant white light flooded the cold desert night, and this light emanated from Cas himself. Cas was glowing, as though he possessed some great and terrible power that no one had ever before dreamed of a djinn possessing. Cas caught a glimpse of Nimrod's eyes widening before Nimrod clamped his hand over them, and backed away cautiously.  
Mr. Coomes and the lion he was fighting, however, both roared in some kind of agony, both their voices and their images slowly fading away along with Cas's white glow.

Cas fell to his knees, feeling something leave him even as a chilly breeze ruffled his t-shirt, bermuda shorts, and purposely messy hair. Cas shivered, and Nimrod, sensing that the danger had passed, took his hand away from his eyes and helped Cas back to his feet silently.

In unison, the two djinn walked over to the black hole in the sand that seemed to go on forever, and into which sand seemed to pour endlessly, as though the hole was a gaping mouth that was insatiably hungry and which devoured everything within reach. This was not a very pleasant image for Cas to think about, particularly since his best friend and her brother had been the first thing that the mouth had devoured, but he went along with Nimrod simply because he feared that without the elder djinn around, something else would go terribly wrong.

Nimrod, perhaps thinking along the same graphic lines as his companion, stayed well clear of the edge of the hole as he peered into it.

"I can't see a thing," he said finally. "It looks as though it goes on forever, which it probably does, if it belonged to a magus."

"Magi can do that sort of thing?" Cas asked interestedly, his mind subconsciously thinking of the three wise men in the Bible story of Epiphany.

Nimrod nodded. "Mundanes are not without resources, Cas. You'd do well to remember this in future. Sometimes we djinn forget what others are capable of, and that's never a good thing to do, whether the others are djinn, mundanes, angels, or demons. Not everyone is as harmless as they might seem." Nimrod gave Cas another sharp look to show that he had not forgotten about Cas's foolishness, but a look that seemed to indicate that they'd have to save the discussion for a later date, when they knew that Holly and Mark were unharmed. "In any case," Nimrod said, abruptly changing the subject, "how did you get all the way out here? I don't see any tire tracks, nor do I see a car or taxi cab. I doubt that you simply teleported here, so I can think of only one other plausible answer."

"We rode a whirlwind that I created," Cas told Nimrod miserably as they backed slowly away from the hole. Cas knew that the story of how he'd been taught, and more importantly, the news of what djinn had taught him, would be a sure-fire way to cause more trouble.

"And where did you learn to do such a thing? More importantly, " Nimrod went on to ask, the tension growing rapidly, "who was it who taught you? I certainly didn't teach you how to create your own whirlwind."

"Bart Aalesworth," Cas muttered, so quietly that he could barely hear himself.

Nimrod raised his eyebrows heavenwards, but his voice was even. "A little louder, Cas. I don't think I quite heard you."

"Bart Aalesworth," Cas repeated, loudly enough for Nimrod to hear clearly.

Nimrod's expression darkened. "Bartholomew Aalesworth? The Ghul? And why would he teach you anything? He's made himself the sworn enemy of the Marid."

Cas thought for a moment, trying to decide how to go about explaining Bart's position. While he was an evil djinn, Bart was still, apparently, an ally, but likely an ally that would have to be watched carefully.

"He helped me out of a scrape, that's all. He told me that he wants to stop Azazel, so he told me what Azazel told him."

Nimrod's disapproval was obvious, from the way his mouth was pressed into a thin, straight line, and the way he whipped out his glasses from a pocket and began to polish them furiously. When he spoke, his voice sounded forced into being calm. "Bartholomew Aalesworth is a very evil djinn, Cas. I thought you knew better than to put your trust in an evil djinn, especially with your background!"

Cas tried not to let himself give into Nimrod's scolding, but despite all of his determination, he felt as though he might begin to cry at any moment.  
"You haven't heard what he told me." Cas said, attempting to remain calm and tear-free.

"I highly doubt that anything you say will make a difference, but go on." Nimrod folded his arms in a very close-minded gesture.

Cas took a deep breath, and began telling Nimrod everything that he knew about Bart, from the first time they'd encountered each other in Cas's dream, all of what Bart had said about Azazel, everything. Nimrod remained silent throughout Cas's recitation, interrupting only once, to ask if the dream had been the one Cas had had on the airplane to Alexandria, which it had been.

"So that's about it. Gabriel had put me on a leyline, Beelzebub found me, and Bart needed to talk to me, so he dragged me out of the leyline."

Nimrod nodded. "That sounds typical of a Ghul," he said, still none too pleased with Cas. "If he hadn't needed you for something, he'd have let you die."

Cas shrugged. "Actually, he told me that I'd have probably won in a fight against the demon. It was weird, but this light came to my rescue, just when I needed it most, and drove it away!" He became more animated as he remembered how the bright white light had come to him, and how it had seemed to burn the demon, as if it was fire, though Cas knew that it couldn't have been. Then Cas made a connection that he wouldn't have unless he'd already been thinking of how he'd driven the lion and Mr. Coomes away. "Come to think of it, just now I felt the same. like I had goosebumps all over one second, and the next feeling like they'd all popped at once."

"Hm," was all Nimrod would say, but Cas pressed on.

"Did I look weird when the light came? Like there was something off about me?"

Nimrod glanced again at where Adam had been fighting the huge ghost lion, and then back at Cas, trying to decide whether or not to tell him the whole truth. Finally, Nimrod answered. "You were the light, Cas. You were glowing so brightly that I was blinded for a second or two."

Cas's eyes widened visibly. "I was the light? But how?"

Nimrod shrugged ambiguously. "Who's to say? I rather think that the only ones who would know the reason behind that would be the angels themselves. And until we find an angel to ask and we get an answer, then we'll just have to keep wondering, now won't we. Right now, though, we have quite a lot of work to do, so let's get to it!"

Cas nodded, and followed Nimrod, glancing back at the twin dunes, and wondering if he'd ever figure out which one was real,, and which one was just a red herring.


	17. Chapter 16: Stairway to Somewhere

Chapter 16: Stairway to... Somewhere**  
**

Holly groaned and picked herself up off of the ground for the second time in what was (to her) less than two hours. Rubbing her eyes, she blinked rapidly several times, worried that her eyes no longer worked, for she was in darkness so completely void of even a glimmer of light that it was oppressive. Instinctively, Holly began taking quick shallow breaths, hyperventilating as though she'd been caught in a lamp again.**  
**Realizing this, she whispered her focus word. "MADECASSEE!" and waited for a small, silvery charcoal pill to appear on her open palm. However, no such relief was forthcoming. Attempting to quell her fears, Holly tried to call out to discover if her brother and Gabriel had come along with her. "Mark?" She squeaked. "Gabriel? Is anyone there?" **  
**

A responding moan came from just a few feet away, and Holly let out a long breath, relieved that at least Mark was there, too.**  
**

"We're both here, Holly. Don't worry. Here, I'll get us a light."

"A lamp?" Holly asked, a bit hopefully, feeling rather as though she could use a good fire.

"Nope. And I don't think that I could get one, either. I'll just use my own angel light."

Just a second later, a pale light shone through the darkness, emanating from Gabriel himself. He was glowing from head to toe, bright enough to illuminate their surroundings, but not too bright as to render it impossible for Holly and Mark to look at him.

"Wow," Holly said, unsure of what to make of this angelic power, but at least the oppressive darkness was gone now.

Mark, by contrast, knew exactly what his opinion of this strange glowing phenomenon was. "That's pretty scary," he said, grinning at Gabriel and Holly.

Holly smiled nervously back, and went to help him up.

"Where are we?" She asked the angel, when Mark had gotten to his feet and was properly balanced.

Now it was Gabriel's turn to smile, and he did so quite mysteriously. "Let's see if you can figure it out."

Holly began, for the first time, to take in her surroundings, not only the sights of delicately carved stone walls and inlaid writing, but also sounds of dripping water, echoing not far away, some restless creatures, and a sharp, dank, damp smell.

"We're underground," Holly said with complete certainty. "No windows, and I feel uber claustrophobic in here. Wish I had a charcoal pill."

Mark looked surprised. "Can't you just use your powers?" He asked, and Holly shook her head.

"They don't work here, for some reason." A thought occurred to her. They were underground, she was unable to use her powers, yet Gabriel was... To a limited degree, at least. "Are we in that horrible hermit magus' house?" She asked, slightly alarmed.

"Yes indeed. And as for the matter of charcoal pills, I'm afraid that you're just going to have to bear the claustrophobia. Just for awhile, at any rate." Gabriel told her, looking very pleased that she'd figured it out.

Holly looked up at the cavernous ceiling with a sigh, resigned to her fate. "Say," she said, noticing something that she hadn't noticed before, "what do you think all this writing is? I can't make heads or tails of it!"

Gabriel followed her gaze, and a puzzled expression came over his face, rather like a black cloud that dimmed the light he gave off. "I can't read it either, Holly. However, I've a good idea of what it is."

"Yeah? And what's that?" By now, Mark was also frowning up at the disturbingly indecipherable writing on the ceiling.

"Kalefe's spells. Recording them in a book would have been far too dangerous for him, as a book is all too easily burned or otherwise destroyed. If you'll observe, those glyphs are quite deeply etched in there. Doubtless he made up some spell that could carve rock as easily as a butterknife can cut butter, or a breadknife slices bread." Gabriel explained, not without a hint of suppressed rage.

"I'll bet anything that one of those spells prevents me from using my powers as long as I'm here. Possibly for the rest of my life, just out of this man's spite."

Gabriel looked at Holly sharply. "Don't say that, girl! You have so much more that you have yet to accomplish!"

This outburst was so unexpected that it intrigued Holly much more than their present situation. "Like what?" She asked interestedly. Immediately, Gabriel seemed to regret his momentary discharge of information, and clammed up.

"You'll find out for yourself when it's time." Was all he'd say, much to Holly's and Mark's disappointment.

Mark surveyed the much graffitied cave ceiling with a thought forming in his mind. It was awhile before he voiced this thought, mostly for the reason that he was unsure of the feeling that began to form in the pit of his stomach. Finally, he realized what it was. "Dread," he whispered, drawing the attention of both Holly and Gabriel.

"What's that, Mark?" Holly asked her brother, squinting because of Gabriel's dimming light.

Mark looked back at them, and upon seeing Gabriel's own pale angel light dimming, he knew immediately that they should get moving.

"We have to leave," He announced, as if he was in charge. "The magic in here is affecting you both!"

Holly glanced at the archangel, and realized with a start that this was evidently true. "You're right, Mark..." She began, but Mark was no longer listening. He had shoved his hand into one of the deep pockets of his shorts, searching for something. Finally, he came up with a small LED flashlight, and grinned.

"Here we are! I thought I had a flashlight- now, let's find a way out of here!"

Seeing a roughly-hewn doorway, devoid of any door, Mark started toward it, only to stop and look back at his companions, who were not moving and had blank expressions on both of their faces. "Are you two coming? I think the magic might have muddled your brains. I'm in charge now!"

Mark went back over, and began pushing the archangel and the djinn ahead of him towards the door, to which the two made no attempt to stop him.

* * *

A few minutes later, out of the oppressive atmosphere of the preceding room, Holly and Gabriel recovered their wits in a much larger and more natural-looking cavern.

"I don't know what came over me!" Holly exclaimed, quite perplexed. "I mean, I knew where I was, but I just didn't know what to do. I did rather want to take a nap, though."

Gabriel nodded, his pale light now restored to its former brightness. "Indeed." he agreed fervently. "It was all very strange. Now, however, I feel perfectly fine."

Mark tried not to let on how pleased he was about his accomplishment, and turned to his little sister. "Hey, kiddo, try to make something with djinn power. It might just work."

Holly nodded, and tried once again to create for herself a charcoal pill. "Actually, I'd better give myself more than just one. MADECASSEE!" She muttered to herself, and indeed, a moment later, she held a small round metal pillbox, filled with the silvery pills. With enormous relief, Holly swallowed one, and then tucked the pillbox into the pocket of her blue jeans, noticing properly for the first time that she once again wore her red silk hijab around her head.

"So your powers do work outside of there!" Gabriel said, rather relieved, it seemed to Holly.

Mark's gaze was already flicking back to the doorway to Kalefe's living quarters. "I'm going back in." He announced boldly.

Both Gabriel and Holly were shocked. "Alone? But Mark, you'll get killed!" Holly said in surprise.

Mark merely shrugged. "Neither of you can go in there for very long. And anyway, it's not like I'll be in the dark- I have a flashlight. I doubt that Kalefe the Ruthless could have planned for flashlights. If I find a way out, I'll come right back out and take you two with me. Also, I'm not affected by the magic stuff in there anyway."

Holly chewed on a fingernail, trying to come up with another reason that her brother could not put himself in danger. Gabriel, however, had begun to nod.

"You have a point. Kalefe likely defended himself well against djinn and angels, but we still can't allow you to go in on your own completely undefended. Here."

Gabriel reached skyward, made a fist, as if his hand were clenched around some sort of handle, and drew it down sharply. With a sound like that of metal upon metal, an extraordinary sword appeared from out of nowhere, and Gabriel handed it to Mark.

"What's it made of?" Mark asked, mesmerized by the way Gabriel's light played off of the shining bluish blade. Gabriel shrugged.

"Heavenly iron, I imagine. Every sword has a different hue when it's presented to its rightful owner. Great for slaying demons. Consider this a belated birthday present, Mark. Here's the scabbard."

Gabriel tossed a scabbard that was the same shade of blue as the sword, which Mark caught with a fumble. Holly glanced at the archangel questioningly.

"Mark has no idea how to hold a sword properly, let alone how to defend himself!" She objected. Mark raised an eyebrow at his sister.

"That's where you can help, kiddo. Zap me with your power and make me into an expert swordmaster or something. Just do it quick, will you?"

Holly bit off a little bit of fingernail, stiffened her resolve, wished for Mark to have amazing skill with his new sword, and uttered her focus word once again. "MADECASSEE!"

At once, Mark's grip on the hilt became firmer, his stance the poised posture of a man who knew how to use the weapon in his hand.

"Excellent." Gabriel said, very pleased with this development. "Incidentally, Mark, if you wish to return the sword to its proper sheath, that is to say, its heavenly sheath, all you need do is raise it in the air, let go, and the sword will vanish from sight. When it's in that state, you can summon it from anywhere, rather as I just did. Understand?"

Mark nodded, eager to get going on his appointed task, and sheathed his sword in the blue sheath that Gabriel had given to him, and fastened the attached leather strap over his shoulder, feeling a little like Link in the Zelda video games. "Righty-O!" He said cheerfully, and fumbled around in his pockets for his flashlight again.

"Don't bother," Holly told him, and presented her brother with a headlamp that she had created while Gabriel had been telling Mark about the sword.

"Hands free, so you can properly defend yourself."

Holly placed her creation on Mark's head, and gave her brother a quick hug, feeling as though she was sending him off to a war that he might not come back from. "Keep us posted!" She ordered, and Mark nodded.

"Here I go, then!" He said cheerfully, and strode back the way they had he'd suspected, the headlamp worked quite perfectly, even though it had been made with djinn power. The ancient hermit magus' living quarters, as illuminated by Holly's headlamp, was a dank, musty place composed of four rooms that had been carved right into the stone. There was a bedchamber with a sort of low cot the frame attached to several rotting strips of what seemed to be leather that was in surprisingly good repair, a room with an enormous stone oven, complete with chimney, that was obviously used for cooking food, and a room that had even more strange glyphs on the ceiling than the others, that contained a well that had long since gone dry, as well as several gilded stone tables. The last room, which Mark wasn't even sure was an actual room rather than a pantry or closet, had a crude wooden door blocking the way. Mark examined the wood and handle, and decided that there was nothing to fear from this door. All the same, he drew his sword and kicked the door open with the sole of his heavy boot. The door splintered in on itself, and Mark was faced by something not altogether unexpected. He stood at the foot of a staircase.

"Hey guys?" He shouted into the other cavern, a grin slowly spreading across his face as he saw the faint light of day at the top of the very extensive stairway. "I found the way out!"


	18. Chapter 17:A Deal With the Devil's Agent

Chapter 17: A Deal With the Devil's Agent

The ride back to Alexandria was done largely in utter silence for several reasons. First and foremost among those reasons, however, was that Nimrod was simply far too incensed to speak. Cas, of course, was far from stupid, and knew better than to try to engage Nimrod in conversation until he had another person (or djinn) to back him up. Unfortunately for Cas, they were hardly halfway back to The Golden Lion when Nimrod chose to ask a question.

"Cas, do you think you can remember where Bartholomew Aalesworth was staying?" Nimrod asked tersely. Cas nodded silently.

"I'm pretty sure I can," He added nervously, thinking to himself that it seemed ominous that Nimrod hadn't exploded with fury yet. All the same, he was thankful for it. Squinting through the cold darkness of the pre-dawn Egyptian morning, Cas tried to get his bearings.

"Which way?" Nimrod asked, sounding a little bit more relaxed.

"It was right near a large lake," Cas recalled, still trying to figure out where they were. "But it was definitely not the sea. If we look for that lake, then we ought to figure out where it was that he was staying."

Nimrod slapped the palm of his hand against his forehead, now more angry at himself than at Cas. "Of course! That will be the Alexandria Hilton. Unlike Azazel, who likes to hide in the shadows, Bartholomew, rather like myself, has a taste for the finer things in life. He's also a bit of a cheapskate, just like the rest of his tribe." Nimrod sighed, and all of his fury evaporated. "Why did you get involved with evil djinn, Cas? Now he'll surely be wanting to cash in favors that you don't owe him. Nevertheless, he might actually know something about what Azazel is planning, and whether or not it actually has something to do with Alexander's Neshamah. I'm beginning to doubt that it does, to speak the truth."

Cas nodded; he was beginning to think the same thing himself. He rather suspected that there was something else, something different than Alexander's vessel, that lay in the spirit world that could become something terrible, if it was modified in 'just the right way,' as Bart had landed the whirlwind several streets away from the Alexandria Hilton, in Alexandria's old city, explaining to Cas that it was best to approach from the ground from their current position. "The element of surprise is quite necessary, and to do that, I think it's best that I hail us a cab to take us there. For now, however, we must wait here for another hour or so until morning, when we can actually go in without seeming suspicious. Until then, we can enjoy some tea here at my friend Akil's tea shop. I guarantee that you'll enjoy it."

To Cas, relaxing and drinking tea seemed like the last thing they ought to be doing, especially since both Holly and Mark could be dead by now, but Nimrod seemed intent on staying here until dawn had broken properly.

A few hours later, having stayed at the teahouse for the entire time, Nimrod took Cas out to the street and managed to waylay a yellow taxi cab, pushing Cas ahead of him into the back seat. "To the Alexandria Hilton," He told the cabbie in his perfect Arabic, and the cabbie nodded, though privately thinking to himself that these two very different looking people must be either quite lazy or desired to make a showy entrance for someone if they weren't willing to walk the short distance to the hotel.

"Yes sir," The man replied, also in Arabic, and put his foot on the gas pedal, driving at a sedate pace around the corner.

Three minutes later, the cabbie pulled his yellow cab into the extensive driveway of the Alexandria Hilton, and stopped in front of the huge and very grand front doors. Nimrod and Cas got out, and Nimrod paid the cabbie, giving him an extra-large tip, so that he would feel that his time had not been wasted. Then, the two djinn walked up the large, grand steps and entered the lobby, in which crowds of people were already gathered at the check-in desks, the check-out desks, and everywhere in between. Cas suddenly appreciated how difficult it might be to find Bart. He was about to say as much to Nimrod when a tall, graceful woman dressed in a long, somewhat drab, grey skirt and a coal-black button-up blouse that had short, frilly sleeves and a high collar. Long blond hair that was fastened in a ponytail snaked down elegantly past her shoulders, giving her the air of careless beauty. The woman seemed in quite a bit of a hurry as she lugged a somewhat bulky and very worn old suitcase toward the checkout desk. There was something that Cas recognized about this woman, something about how her face seemed both young and lined with age at the same time, something in the way her dark eyes glinted as her head swiveled to see who was watching her.

Cas realized who the woman was at the same time she saw him. "Nimrod?" He called to his companion, "That's Dimme Teer!"

Across the room, Dimme's eyes widened to their fullest extent in sheer horror as she seemed to recognize Cas, and she dropped her suitcase, which burst open, spilling grey, white, and black clothing all over the place, but Dimme didn't pay it any mind. Nimrod turned toward her, just as Dimme began to bolt for the door, terrified.

"Follow her!" Ordered Nimrod, apparently giving up the search for Bart for the moment, in favor of gaining some better information.

Unfortunately, this was no easy task, for Dimme darted out into the streets, and ran across the cobbles with only a soft pattering of feet. Her breathing, by contrast, was heavy, scared gasps that led the two good djinn through each alley after her.

"We just want to talk to you!" Cas called, vaguely wondering if this was true; he had no way of knowing if Nimrod wanted- or, indeed, if he was even able to- bottle her up. This voice of their intent seemed only to spur Dimme onwards, and she darted, full pelt, around a corner.

The bricks that made up the street here were uneven; the road hadn't been driven on for several decades. Dimme tripped on one of the jutting bricks, and took a spectacular fall, landing in the dust and other filth that had been allowed to accumulate in the road.

"Stop," Nimrod commanded, but Dimme did not. In a last, desperate effort to escape them, she began to crawl, trying to avoid putting any pressure on the foot she had tripped with, the ankle of which was already looking rather purple and swollen, as if she had sprained it.

"Leave me alone!" she cried, her voice catching in her throat. She fumbled for something at her hip, and drew out a long, deadly-looking knife, the black blade of which glimmered in the early morning sunshine.

Cas walked forward slowly, holding out his hands in a gesture that was meant to be calming. "We're not going to hurt you, Dimme. I'm Cas, and this is Nimrod. We just want to talk to you."

A realization seemed to sweep over her as she squinted hard at Cas's face. "You're Castiel Malone, aren't you?" She asked, stopping in her tracks.

Cas nodded. "I am. And you're Dimme Teer. We want to talk to you about Azazel."

Dimme turned herself over, not without some difficulty, and sat up straight in the midst of the dirt and dust. "I'm sorry that I ran, son. It's just that, well, you look exactly as your father did when we first met."

Cas was too shocked to reply at once. After a tense pause, Cas found his voice again. "I do?" he asked.

Dimme nodded, and began to struggle to regain her footing. Finally, she managed to push herself up against a brick wall and smiled vaguely at her son. "Yes, you look like a younger version of him. Azazel takes more after my side of the family as far as looks go, but his devious mind is nothing short of demonic." Dimme sighed. Cas nodded.

"That's what we want to talk to you about. I've been speaking with Bart, and he didn't seem to know hardly anything about what Azazel has planned."

Dimme shrugged. "I'm sure that I don't know. Beyond the fact that he's decided to save his revenge on you and that girl whose name I've forgotten for something really good. Also, he's beginning to get some lesser demons to band together under him. Hardly surprising, really, when you consider that you and he are both half demon yourselves."

Cas's expression, already somewhat grim, darkened considerably. "I'd appreciate it if you didn't mention my heritage again." He said quietly, and yet very dangerously. "Now, you're sure that you don't know anything more of what Azazel is plotting?"

Again, Dimme shrugged, somehow remaining completely indifferent. "I might remember more if you had something I wanted, or promised me something. We could make a deal, just like the demons do it. It'd be very professional, I assure you."

Behind Cas, Nimrod sighed. "What do you want, Dimme?" He asked, seeming resigned, but not unreasonable.

A small, devilish smile flickered across Dimme's delicate features for a second before she answered. "Why, what else, Nimrod? I want three wishes. Now, here comes the difficult part. On the one hand, you're much more powerful, Nimrod, as well as a great enemy of my brother's. It would be simply too delicious to pass up an opportunity like this one, but there's also Castiel to consider. He is my son, after all, and I'd like to see his powers at work. You see, Azazel is special, and I'm intensely curious to see if you draw your powers from the same source, Castiel." Dimme mused, looking from Cas to Nimrod and then back again.

Nimrod seemed even more resigned when he spoke up again. "We haven't got all day, Dimme. Any time now would be much obliged."


	19. Chapter 18: Cliffhanger

Chapter 18: Cliffhanger  
"Jeesh, are you two ready yet? I swear, you both take longer than Mr. Groanin does after you tell him to leave the TV when a cricket match is in session! Hurry up already!" Mark complained, after what felt like an age of waiting. Finally, Holly and Gabriel told him, slightly irritably, that they had made the necessary preparations.

Holly handed her brother a length of sturdy climber's rope that would bear any amount of stress placed upon it, but was capable of being severed if need be. "Know any good knots?" She asked him.

Mark scowled. "Of course I do. If you'll recall, I was in Boy Scouts for at least eight years. No djinn power got me that talent."

Holly frowned at Mark's impertinence, but she could hardly blame him, seeing how much stress he'd been put through recently. So, sighing, she let that one go, and let Mark tie seemingly impossible knots in the sturdy climber's rope around sturdy metal rings set in climber's harnesses that Holly had also been responsible for creating, connecting himself to Holly and Gabriel. Gabriel, meanwhile, was busily searching his pockets for something.

"Aha!" He finally shouted, taking out three circular pewter medallions that clanked together when he held them all by their white ribbons. "Here you are, Mark!" Gabriel grinned, tossing one of the medallions through the air and into Mark's palm.

"What are these for?" Mark asked, staring at the metal object, that was surprisingly heavy, given its small size, even as Gabriel tossed another one of the identical medals to Holly and slipped the other one around his neck.

"Protection. The writing engraved on the fronts and backs are in Enochian. It's an ancient spell, one that's far older than that upstart Kalefe." Gabriel explained nonchalantly, checking Mark's knots in the rope to make sure that they were stable. "Holly, they won't stop us from feeling sleepy and lethargic, but they'll keep us awake if we concentrate. Mark, since you're not affected by the magic, it won't do much of anything unless you're directly threatened by some otherworldly being, like a demon."

"Ah," Mark said, slipping the ribbon of his medallion around his neck and tucking the trinket beneath the collar of his t-shirt. "In any case, let's get going. Sticking around here is beginning to give me the chills."

Holly rolled her eyes. "_You're_ the one who's got chills? Think of me, made of fire! I bet I'm ten times colder than you are!"

Mark only shrugged, drew his new sword, and led them forward, back into the long abandoned lair of the Egyptian magus.

At first, everything seemed just fine, and both Holly and Gabriel were bright-eyed. However, as they approached the staircase, the heads of the djinn and the archangel began to nod.

"Stay awake!" Mark snapped at them as he felt them beginning to lag behind. "We'll be out of here in a little bit- you'll survive!"

Sleepily, Holly and Gabriel nodded. "We're coming." Gabriel said, taking a deep breath in an effort to wake himself up. Mark raised his eyebrows at them, sighed, and dragged his companions along.

In her half-dazed state, Holly didn't pay much attention to what was going on directly in front of her as Mark led them to the steps and finally began to climb. She was far too concentrated on placing one foot in front of the other to notice when Mark fought off the pale, headless body of a man that tried to strangle him, or when he destroyed scores of skeletons with several expert swings of his brilliant blue sword, or even when a huge, hairy black dog bounded directly toward them, foaming at the mouth and death in its eyes. Eventually, she was so sleepy that she was practically leaning on Mark. Indeed, the only thing that stopped her from properly leaning on Mark was the fact that he kept on moving up the stairs, stairs that seemed to have no end...

Mark could see the top of the stairs- a faint, greyish light that led him onwards and became a little bit brighter with each step he took. What was making the journey up the thousands of stairs was not really the various creatures that attempted to kill them, it was the increasing uncooperativeness of his companions. So when Holly dozed off almost three-quarters of the way up the stairs, Mark wasn't best pleased. However, with Gabriel's sleepy encouragement, they continued on, with Holly being dragged along almost as though she was a life-sized rag doll.

As they grew closer to the pale grey light, their progress began to slow even more: for now Gabriel, too, had fallen fast asleep, and Mark was beginning to tire, his strength fading. At one point, he almost fell over, except that he knew he must go on. He couldn't possibly leave his little sister and Gabriel the archangel in this dangerous place, so, with a final valiant heave, Mark managed to pull himself, Holly, and Gabriel up the very last step and into a small closet of a room. There was a very old door, which Mark forced open, and the three tumbled out and into a larger room.

Without pausing a moment, Mark cut himself free of his companions and walked over to a roughly-hewn doorway that seemed to be carved out of orangeish rock, and promptly sneezed thrice at the brilliant but cold sunlight that met him there. To his right was a rickety wooden ladder, and below him were more of what appeared to be rooms carved from the orange rock. Mark took a step or two forward, turned 180 degrees, and looked above him at the overhanging cliff face. His jaw dropped.

"No way," He muttered to himself. "No way are we in the States!"

From inside the room Mark had just left, Gabriel groaned as he stood up and stretched. "What was that you said, Mark?" He called, trying to work the uncomfortable crick out of his neck. "Something about the states?"

Mark bounded back into the cliff dwelling. "We are in the States! Right near the four corners!"

Still somewhat sleepily, Gabriel shuffled out into the bright sunshine and shivered. "A bit cold, isn't it?"

Mark nodded shivered as well, wishing that he was wearing jeans instead of shorts, or had at least a jacket to protect him from the chilly weather.

Holly, too, had woken up and was trying to help figure out why they had come to one of the Anasazi cliff dwellings, but her attention was entirely diverted by the chill she felt. "Where are we? It's colder here than it was in those caves! I'm not sure if I can use my power here." Holly joined her brother and her guardian angel in the doorway.

Gabriel, who seemed to grow stronger in the sunlight, yawned one more time and cracked his knuckles. "I believe we're in one of the Mesa Verde cliff dwellings, right outside Durango, Colorado. Mesa Verde is Spanish it translates to Green Table, named by the Spanish explorers for its green, tree covered plateaus. I've absolutely no idea which cliff dwelling we're in, though. It doesn't look as though it has been discovered yet, judging by that skeleton of a ladder." Gabriel gestured to the ladder, paused for a minute, and took a step toward it. "I could probably fix this, but first I think we ought to try and figure out why the stairs led here. While I was starting to nod off, I noticed some writing above the doorway at the top of the stairs. It says, roughly translated, 'Speak his name to reveal the sentinel.' I imagine that we're supposed to find Alexander's vessel and say his name."

"So, we just walk up to people and say 'Alexander?'" Mark asked, not without some contempt at the notion.

"No, Mark. We have to determine who Alexander's vessel is first. That staircase was probably enchanted to lead us somewhere near Alex. I vote that we head into town and have a look around. There's no telling how long Alexander's spirit has been floating around in this area. Maybe he even possessed some of the Anasazi who lived in these cliff dwellings." Holly volunteered, and concentrated on the ladder. "MADECASSEE!" she all but shouted, liking the sound of her voice echoing across the chilly desert.

"Not so loud, kiddo!" Mark scolded, but he was grateful for her exercise of power: in addition to making a new, sturdy wooden ladder, Holly had also given each of them a warm pea coat, of the kind more commonly used by sailors of the past couple centuries, and had thoughtfully lengthened Mark's shorts into long, boot-cut trousers.

"Let's go, then." Holly buttoned up her bright cherry red coat and scrambled down the ladder, shoving her hands into her pockets the moment she was on solid ground again. "Hurry up, I'm freezing!" she complained.

Mark sighed at his sister's impatience, but after he sheathed his sword, slid down the ladder fairly quickly, not even bothering with buttoning up his jacket. Gabriel soon followed, looking a little ungainly while he tried and failed not to drop his carved ram's head cane that he had somehow not lost throughout the struggle up the stairs. Not as bothered by the chilly air as his djinn sister, Mark caught the cane easily and held on to it until Gabriel finally stepped off of the ladder, his face a little bit red with embarrassment as he took the cane away from Mark.

"Er, thank you, Mark." said the angel, trying to regain his composure. "It's been awhile since I've been on a ladder. Normally I just use leylines to get around, but there you are. Shall we head into town?"

"Wait a second. Brother mine, do you really intend to drag that sword around with you in Durango? You'll get in trouble!" Holly objected, still shivering. Mark sighed, but nodded all the same.


	20. Chapter 19: Impending War

Chapter 19: Impending War

"Very well, I've decided. Castiel." Dimme said, raising her chin like an empress, and smiling sinisterly. "You'll grant me three wishes. Don't worry, it won't be anything that rests on your conscience. All I really want to find out is where you draw your power from."

Cas sighed. "Fine. Wish away."

Dimme thought for a moment. "Very well, my first wish is that my suitcase, which you caused me to drop, was returned to me immediately."

Cas nodded, envisioned Dimme's suitcase appearing on the bricks next to her, and muttered his focus word. "APOGEOTROPICAL." A moment later, the black piece of luggage appeared with a soft clatter right beside its owner.

Dimme nodded, though not particularly pleased. "Very good, Castiel. Though, I rather think that fetching me my suitcase didn't require enough power. Now, on to my next wish..."

"Wait a moment," Nimrod interrupted. He'd been uncharacteristically quiet up until that point, and both Cas and Dimme were startled enough to listen. "I think that before Cas grants you any more wishes, you ought to uphold your end of the bargain."

Dimme frowned, but nodded. "I suppose that's fair," she said sullenly, and Cas suspected that Dimme really had planned to cheat them out of the information that she had promised to them. She took a deep breath and began. "I believe that I already mentioned that Azazel was beginning to recruit some of the lesser demons to his cause. He's been at it for months, and almost every demon he's spoken to wants something in return for their loyalty. There are a select few who cower before him as the son of the Lord of the flies, but I suspect that those same demons would show you the same respect. In any case, his time has been eaten away by negotiations."

"And what is his cause that he needs so many demons for?" Nimrod asked suspiciously, almost as though he already knew.

Dimme's frown vanished, replaced once again by her soft, sinister smile. "I would have thought that was obvious by now, Nimrod. He's getting ready for a war. Possibly the biggest war that this world has ever seen."

"World War three, you mean?" asked Cas, dreading the prospect.

Dimme laughed, a sort of high-pitched, twittering chirp that, coming from anyone else, would have made Cas smile. "Don't be silly. It'll be much worse than either World War. And in any case, you can hardly call it a 'world war' if demons and angels get directly involved. Believe me, once Azazel marches to the battlefield with his troops, the angels will be hard-pressed not to run to meet them."

"And then what?" Cas all but whispered in horror.

Dimme's smile widened. "Then, Castiel, once they have defeated everyone who stands in their way, Azazel will march on to Heaven itself."

Something inside Cas's head snapped at the implication of demons taking over Heaven, and his horrified countenance twisted with anger. "HE WILL DO NO SUCH THING!" Cas thundered, his face colouring with suppressed rage.

"Calm down, Cas," intoned Nimrod carefully, placing a hand on Cas's shoulder to help calm the young djinn.  
Cas was still inclined to be angry, but he quieted all the same, staring down at the bricks beneath his feet, his lips pressed into a thin line.

"Why does Azazel wish to accomplish by invading Heaven?" Nimrod asked Dimme. Dimme laughed again, an edge of mocking cruelty sneaking into the sound, and making Cas look up curiously.

"I would have thought that much would be obvious, Nimrod. With Heaven conquered, there will be nothing to stop the most powerful demons from rising up from Hell."

"And after that?" Nimrod asked. "Surely he's planned for what will happen afterwards?"

"I believe that he plans to place his father in charge of everything. I must say, even though he's met Beelzebub only once, Azazel is a very loyal son. Much more so than you, Castiel." If Dimme had meant to offend Cas, she failed miserably.

"I refuse to acknowledge you people as my family. If you'll recall, Dimme, you were the one who murdered my parents!"Cas said defiantly, his face still a little red with rage.

Dimme snorted with disgust. "You mean those mundanes? You do realize that the only reason they took care of you was because an angel gave you to them? They took care of you simply because they were too scared to do otherwise."

Cas scowled, but said nothing, mostly because Nimrod was talking again.

"This is completely irrelevant right now. In any case, why do you seem so calm about all of this? Surely you can't expect to simply walk away unharmed? You ran from Cas because you thought him to be a demon, why aren't you terrified at the implication of so many being raised?"

Dimme stopped staring at Cas and turned her attention to Nimrod. "Do you think my son is stupid, Nimrod? He made provisions for those he views as important. There are a select few people who no demon is permitted to kill. I believe that the list is as follows: Azazel, myself, Bartholomew Aalesworth, Lilith and Mimi de Ghulle, and... oh, yes, the both of you and that girl, Holly, isn't it?"

Cas paled rapidly. "Why would he make provisions for us and Holly?" he asked in a shaky whisper.

Dimme raised an eyebrow in apparent amusement. "Haven't you guessed? Azazel wants to kill you three himself. Or turn you into slaves, whichever he finds to be more degrading at the time. He's told me that he still hasn't quite decided."

"What about Bartholomew and the de Ghulles?" Nimrod asked curiously. "I can see why Azazel would save himself and you from certain doom, but what makes those three so special? Are they helping in his effort?"

Dimme nodded silently. "Exactly so." She added. "Bart has been ever so helpful, and so have Mimi and Lilith. Those two aren't as stupid as they look, you know."

Nimrod nodded thoughtfully, but pressed further. "And why would you run from Cas?"

Dimme shrugged. "The war hasn't started yet, and there was no guarantee that his unholy Lordship would leave me totally unscathed should we encounter one another again. I have you to thank for that, Castiel. The last I heard, he's been rather displeased with my youngest son."

Cas raised his gaze to look his mother in the eye. "If he is displeased, it is because I've made my own decisions. I will not be a puppet." He spoke evenly, all signs of fear, anger, or discomfort gone. "I refuse to be a puppet."

Dimme nodded. "That desire is easily understood, Castiel. Now, was that all, or did you want to pump me for even more information?"

"One more thing," Cas added, feeling calmer than he had in what seemed like a long time, "Bart made mention of a so-called 'missing link,' a powerful weapon, and that Azazel was searching the spirit world for something. What does this mean?"

"Well, as to the searching the spirit world, that's where quite a few demons choose to live, so that's hardly surprising," Dimme replied openly, "But as to the 'missing link' and the powerful weapon, either it's complete *BS or it's about the demons. Bart is a bit enigmatic that way: even I'm never sure of whether or not he's telling the truth."

"I think that's all," Nimrod said. "You're free to make your last two wishes, Dimme."

"Gee, thanks." Dimme said, her thoughtful expression vanishing in an instant, replaced by pure sarcasm. "At least all of that talking helped me to think of what I'm going to wish for. Right-O, Castiel, my second wish is that my injured ankle- which is also your fault, by the way- is healed."

Cas nodded, mumbled his focus word, and instantly Dimme sighed with relief and stood up straight.

"That's better. Now, that last question got me thinking, so I believe I'll make my third wish this: I wish that I can tell whether or not Bartholomew Aalesworth is speaking the truth or not."

Cas wondered how he was going to go about that, but then he recalled a book he had read on the art of lie detection, and eventually decided that he was overthinking things. "APOGEOTROPICAL," he muttered for a third time.

"Thank you for your assistance. This is where we part ways. Good day." Dimme bent down and picked up her suitcase. Her pointed shoes clicked on the bricks as she strolled away, vanishing around the corner. Cas turned to Nimrod with a searching expression.

"Well?" he said bleakly, "Where does that leave us? What do we do next?"

Nimrod shook his head, as though ridding his mind of an idea, and then endeavored to answer Cas. "I think," he began slowly, deliberately, "that we ought to go back to the desert."

*Just an abbreviation of actually what she said- Dimme has a much fouler mouth than depicted here. I removed most of the swearing, though, but that was the only instance where it had to stay (kinda).


	21. Chapter 20: More Family Issues

Chapter 20: More Family Issues

"Well, we've searched the phone book with no success. What now?" Holly asked her companions.  
Mark stretched his arms out in front of him. "Well, I for one am starving. Do you think that diner is any good?" He pointed down the street towards a building with a large front window, on which was plastered the image of a plate of 'smiling' bacon and eggs.

"It's incredibly likely. Those sorts of places are always better than chains, I've found."

"Let's go then. Mark, do you have any money? I'll pay you back later."

Mark checked his pockets, and shook his head. "I didn't think to bring any last night when you and Cas essentially kidnapped me."

"Well, then we'd better get inside soon or I feel like I'll freeze to death. It might take me awhile for my powers to return- I feel really, really torpid. Almost as much as I did in London."

"There will be no need to exercise your powers, Holly." Gabriel said kindly, leading the way to the diner, "I'll pay for our breakfasts."

Holly and Mark exchanged glances, shrugged in unison, and followed the angel into the diner.

It was extremely busy for such an early hour, and their waitress, a girl named Shelley, was hard-pressed to find an empty table for the three of them.

"Here you are," she said finally, leading them to a booth in the very back of the diner and passing out three menus. "Be back in a sec," she said, smiling, and vanished to take orders from other tables.

"What should we do now?" Mark asked quietly, leaning into the centre of the table in order to be heard only by Holly and Gabriel.

"First we have to eat. Afterwards we'll take a simple, logical searching of the city. If we don't find Alexander, then we'll try another approach and look at birth certificates." Gabriel said, calmly examining his menu.

Mark was skeptical. "And how are you going to be allowed to look at the birth certificates? They don't let just anyone see those, you know."

"I'm aware of that, Mark. However, you don't sound like someone who just watched me disappear and reappear over and over." Gabriel commented bluntly, raising his eyebrows but not looking up from the menu.

"Mark, just shut it." Holly ordered her brother. "I'm hungry, I'm tired, and not in the best of moods. I'd wager that you are also hungry, probably even more tired than I am, since you stayed awake throughout all of this, so I propose that we all have food and coffee before we discuss anything further."

Scowling, Mark stopped talking and looked down at his menu, searching for something that seemed appetizing. He still hadn't found anything when Shelley came back for their drink order.

"What can I get you three?" She asked cheerily.

"Coffee," Mark grumbled, not looking up.

"And how do you want that, hon?" Shelley asked, her pen poised over her pad of paper.

"He likes it black," Holly said, sensing that Mark was too disgruntled to reply himself. "As for me, I'd like my coffee with extra cream and sugar, please."

"Tea with lemon, please." Gabriel said pleasantly, and as though sensing that Shelley was going to ask what kind of tea, he added "It doesn't matter what brew, just give me whatever's your favourite."

Shelley nodded smilingly, and walked away to relay their order to the kitchen. Another tense silence ensued before Gabriel spoke again. "You know, Alexander's name was actually Alexandros. That's the name in the original Greek."

"So that's what those words you saw above the door meant for us to say? Not Alexander, but Alexandros?" Holly asked. Somewhere in the periphery of her consciousness, she heard a baby screaming and a rather loud smashing noise.

"It's likely. In some cultures, it's necessary to know the real name of a person in order to curse them, and it seemed logical that Kalefe would have used his enemy's name to curse him and him alone. Which leads me to the conclusion that one would have to speak the exact words Aléxandros ho Mégas in order to lead us directly to his lost soul."

The noise from just a booth away, directly behind Holly, became louder, and she was vaguely aware of a young woman speaking soothingly to the shrieking child. The screams lapsed momentarily, and Holly looked back down at her menu, wishing desperately for just a sip of hot coffee. She was quite taken aback when she felt a strong yet small hand tug at the back of her hijab and pull the silk cloth clean off of her head. Holly's head snapped in a ninety-degree angle, partly because of the pull of her hijab as she let out a cry of surprise.

"Oh my word! I'm so sorry!" Holly was met by the contrite face of a thin, pale young woman who was twisted around in her seat, holding a small child in her arms. The most striking thing about her were her strange eyes: one was so dark, it almost seemed black, but the other couldn't be more different- it was pale blue that reminded Holly of a clear winter sky.

Tearing her gaze away from the woman's strange eyes, Holly looked lower to see the tiny thief. A chubby baby, only about a year old, he had the same strange eyes and the same dark hair as his mother, and had his tiny hand clasped around a corner of the red silk hijab.

"I'm so sorry," The woman repeated, biting her lower lip anxiously as though fearing that Holly's silence meant that she was too enraged to speak.

However, the opposite was true. Holly had merely been taken aback by the events. Finally, she burst into laughter. "It's fine, don't worry!" Holly waved the offense away, ignoring Mark who had begun to splutter something about indecency. Still smiling and chuckling a little, Holly began taking the pins out of her hair to allow her much-twisted plait to uncurl into a long braid that hung limply down her back. "He can keep it," Holly felt faintly disgusted when she noticed that the corner of the piece of silk was now in the baby's mouth, and he was sucking on both it and his fist with apparent relish.

"Ugh, Alexei! That's not for you to eat!" the woman scolded her son when she noticed Holly staring. After removing the cloth from little Alexei's mouth, the woman introduced herself. "I'm Xena Epira. That's X-E-N-A. Are you sure I can't reimburse you? Silk isn't cheap."

Holly thought for a moment, examining Alexei's round, pink face, particularly his mismatched eyes. "Actually, I think there is, Xena. You can let me pay for your breakfast, and Alexei's, if he's getting anything. And don't even think of changing what you're ordering. If anything, make it more expensive! I'm Holly, by the way. These two gentlemen are my brother, Mark, and my guardian, Gabriel." Holly gestured to Mark and Gabriel in turn, and each of them nodded politely, though both seemed a bit bored.

"And by saying that she will pay for your meal, she actually means that I'll do it," Gabriel said, returning to the menu. "And possibly pay me back later with some of her father's money."

Noticing Xena's odd expression, Holly explained in a half-lie. "When I was a baby, probably even younger than Alexei, my mother gave me up. Ever since then, Gabriel's been sort of like a guardian angel to me."

Holly was prevented from saying more immediately by the return of Shelley the waitress with their coffees and Gabriel's tea.

"Here you go, sir. I hope you like sweet tea, because that's what I picked for you." Gabriel smiled warmly.

"I thought you would. Excellent choice, Shelley." he praised. Shelley almost glowed as she took down their orders.

She was heading back down along the row of booths when she noticed Xena. "Oh, I'm sorry, Xene! How long have you been waiting there?"

"Not long, Shelley. Mags told me that she had a lot of tables to attend to, so I said that I'd wait." Xena replied quietly, deftly keeping Holly's hijab away from Alexei's mouth.

"Oh, gosh. She's probably forgotten all about you by now. You know how Mags is. What did you want?"

"Whatever it is, put it on our tab, would you Shelley?" Gabriel called over, in between sips of his sweet tea.

Xena's pale cheeks pinked slightly, but she ordered a coffee and some pancakes. Then she turned back to Holly, Mark, and Gabriel. "Thank you," she said earnestly, setting Alexei back in his high chair.

"Don't mention it," Gabriel waved his hand dismissively, sipping his tea absently.

Suddenly, he stood up, finished his sweet tea in a few large gulps, reached in his pocket and withdrew a leather wallet and handed it to Mark. "Tell Shelley to give my breakfast to old Mr. Jennings. That man could do with a square meal, but all he ever orders is coffee. Keep looking for Alexander. I'll find you two later."

"Where are you going?" Holly asked curiously as Gabriel began to sweep away from the booth.

He turned back to look at her grimly. "One of my... estranged brothers is in town." He said simply, and left the diner to vanish with the usual soft fluttering of wings just outside the front door.


	22. Chapter 21: The Heir of Alexander

Chapter 21: The Heir of Alexander

It hadn't been Holly's intention to become separated from her brother, and consequently lost. She merely paused a moment to drop one of Gabriel's fifty dollar bills into an empty styrofoam cup held by a homeless man, and when she looked up, Mark had vanished. In point of fact, he was just around the corner, headed to the local hospital to try and check birth records, and assuming, incorrectly, that Holly was right behind him.

Looking around and trying not to panic, Holly couldn't locate Mark, so she decided, sensibly, to conduct her own search for Alexander. She would have gone straight to the hospital, and probably would have run straight into Mark, except her attention was diverted by Xena's exit from the diner.

Instinctively ducking into a hidden niche in between two shops, one selling only candles, the other hawking pet supplies, Holly watched in fascination as Xena walked purposefully up the street, towards the homeless man, and spoke to him.

"Hi Larry." Xena said, fumbling around in her purse while trying to hold the squirming Alexei still. "Go get yourself something to eat. Here you are."

"What brought this on?" Larry asked, his voice scratchy and hoarse, presumably from heavy smoking.

Xena sighed. "Someone paid for my meal, and I know for sure that you haven't eaten for three days, you proud old eejit!" Finally, Xena drew out a twenty dollar bill and pushed it into Larry's styrofoam cup, noticing the $50 as she did so. "So who gave you fifty bucks?" she asked curiously, readjusting Alexei's weight in her arms so that he was in less danger of being dropped.

"Some kid," Larry said vaguely. Xena sighed.

"I see your literary skills are as good as ever. Just don't spend that money on smokes again. Spend it on food or something, will you?"

Larry gave a laugh that soon turned into a cough, and he grinned at Xena, showing nicotine- yellowed teeth. "Yes ma'am. Of course, ma'am, I wouldn't think of buying more smokes." He said in mock respect.

Xena rolled her eyes, muttered something indistinguishable, and continued on her way. Which just so happened to lead her directly past the candle shop and pet supplies.

Holly stepped out from her hiding place, causing Xena to utter a little scream before she recognized her.

"Oh, Holly! You scared me half to death! What were you doing, skulking around in alleyways? And what happened to Mark and Gabriel?"

Holly shrugged silently, unfeigned tears beginning to form in her eyes as feeling welled up inside her.

"You got lost?" Xena guessed, and Holly nodded. "Well, do you have a cell phone, then?"

"I don't think so," Holly muttered, searching her jeans pockets, and then her coat pockets without success.

"Mine died yesterday. Do you have any change? There's a pay phone around the corner."

Holly nodded. "I think I've got a bit." Again, she searched her pockets, and again came up empty, apart from a few piastres that she'd forgotten to take out of her pockets the previous evening.

These Xena eyed with not inconsiderable curiosity. "Those sure aren't nickels and dimes," she said. "Where are they from?"

"Egypt," Holly replied without thinking, and immediately winced as she shoved the piastres back into her jeans pocket.

"Egypt?" Xena asked. "Why do you have Egyptian money? Why haven't you gone to the bank and exchanged it or something?"

Holly intended to come up with a reasonable excuse, but instead, she found herself spilling out the truth as if compelled to do so by an unseen force.

By the time she had finished, Xena had raised her eyebrows so high, they seemed in danger of vanishing into her curly black locks. "I don't want to sound like I think you're a liar or anything," she started, "But did you hit your head on something? You seem a little bit... um... ditzy."

"I guess I do sound insane," Holly conceded, "But it's the honest-to-Allah truth, I swear!"

Xena sighed. "If you say so, Holly. How about I loan you some change to pay for that call, huh? Then we can wait by the telephone for your brother or guardian or whoever to come. Does that sound okay?"

Holly frowned. "You really do think I'm crazy, don't you? But I swear, on my life, that I'm telling you the truth! I've come here to find _Aléxandros ho Mégas_!"

At the mention of Alexander's Greek name, something about Xena changed. Her expression turned from timid bewilderment to poised confidence, a manic glint in her contrasting eyes.

"It's about time," she said, in a voice that was at least an octave below normal.

"Wh-what do you mean?" Holly asked, thoroughly unnerved by the sudden transition.

Xena sighed loudly. "Really, djinn these days..." she muttered in the same unearthly voice. "I'm Aléxandros ho Mégas, girl! Um... here take him. I think Xena has something in her purse that'll help convince you." Xena/Alexander shoved the pleasantly oblivious Alexei into Holly's arms, where he immediately latched onto her braid and began playing with it.

"Are you sure you're not Xena?" Holly asked Xena/Alexander cautiously, ignoring Alexei.

Xena/Alexander waved Xena's hand dismissively. "Quite sure- as sure as I am that you're a djinn, I was once a djinn, and I got into a spot of trouble with a fellow called Kalefe the Ruthless, back in the deserts of Egypt." Finally, Xena/Alexander drew out a folded piece of paper. "Aha! Here it is! There, read that."

Alexander passed the paper to Holly, who unfolded it and read it as quickly as she could while holding Alexei. "Nimrod said that this story was all a bunch of hooey," she said finally.

Xena/Alexander clicked their tongue impatiently. "I expect every djinn's forgotten why I'm suffering in the first place, have they? Well, you tell this Nimrod character that I got a spell cast on myself so that djinn like you and him could live in peace today. And back then, too."

Holly looked back down at the paper. On it, scrawled in brown crayon, was the exact story that Nimrod had told them, as well as a few extra details, such as the clue for a prophet, and how, exactly, a djinn, a human, and an angel were expected to free Alexander. "How did you...?" she began, but Alexander interrupted again.

"I told you, I'm the one you're looking for!" he insisted. "Now, look lively, or you'll be caught off guard when it's time."

"Time for what?" Holly asked. Alexander sighed impatiently.

"Didn't you read that paper? You have to face a trial!" Alexander looked around, seeming agitated.

"What kind of trial?" Holly looked back at the paper, trying to find mention of a trial.

"If I told you that, what kind of trial would it be?" he asked indignantly.

"You have a point. But we thought that you'd have your own name, not Xena."

"Yes, well, Xena's my most direct descendant- at least the only one who lives in a desert. She's named after my mother. I told her to name Alexei after me, in order to get your attention."

"My attention?"

"Not necessarily yours, but any djinn that had a mundane and an angel for friends. Although," he admitted sheepishly, "I did pop inside Alexei for a second- just long enough to grab that scarf off of your head, and get your attention. Now, I hope you're prepared, because in another minute or two, you'll be gone."

"What?" Holly asked, but her voice was drowned out by a sudden gust of wind. Acting quickly, Alexander snatched Alexei away from Holly. The wind intensified until her hair came loose from its tight braid, fanning out in all directions.

"Don't worry!" Alexander called, waving Xena's delicate hand in farewell. "You'll do just fine, after all, you're the Prophet we've all been waiting for!" Holly barely heard the farewell, because the air was rushing faster and and faster until it became an unearthly still silence.

An unseen pair of hands grabbed her by the ankles and began to drag her downwards, through the pavement itself.  
She felt a scream rising up in her throat, but when she opened her mouth to give voice to it, nothing came out. She looked down, trying to see her unknown assailant, and tugged hard at her ankles, wishing that she hadn't chosen to wear sneakers instead of boots.

When she was finally released, she found that she'd toppled into an entirely different reality altogether.


	23. Chapter 22: Gathering the Soul Part 1

Chapter 22: Gathering the Soul Part 1

Mark was completely confused. He had no idea where he was, and felt almost as though he'd become blind. The silent darkness of the underground chamber pressed in on all sides, until Mark felt like shouting aloud with frustration. Just as he opened his mouth to call out to determine whether or not he was alone, a bright, bright floodlight clicked on, almost blinding him all over again.

"Champions, choose your weapons!" shouted a clear, carrying voice from somewhere above, to a deafening trumpet fanfare that was so loud that Mark had to clap his hands to his ears.

"Sword." Grunted a voice from the opposite end of the cavern, which was revealed to be some sort of arena.

"The Champion of the Sorcerer chooses the sword! Champion of the Prophet, what do you choose?"

Mark looked around, his eyes still adjusting to the blinding light, trying to see who it was who had spoken. His eyes fixed on a much decorated box-seat up in the stands. One of the figures, a shadowy man, he didn't recognize, but he'd seen the woman who sat next to the announcer before. He almost gasped as he realized it was Xena Epira! But what did Xena have to do with anything?

"Champion of the Prophet, make your choice!" The man seemed impatient now. Smiling vaguely, Mark reached skyward and clasped his right hand around the handle of his new sword.

"I choose the sword also!" He called to the box.

"The Champion of the Prophet chooses the sword! This shall make for an interesting match, ladies and gentlemen!" Mark ignored this comment, and drew his hand sharply down, just as he'd seen Gabriel do earlier. The bluish sword came down, appearing seemingly out of nowhere with a scraping sound.

Mark looked over at his opponent, and bit back a swear. The so-called 'Champion of the Sorcerer' was a hulking human figure standing just outside the floodlight's beam, and was at least twice Mark's size. He hoped that his new skill with his sword would be sufficient to complete the challenge.

"Champions, assume your positions!" Ordered the announcer. A few more floodlights clicked on, illuminating the rest of the field, and the Champion of the Sorcerer padded silently towards a smaller ring halfway between himself and Mark. The man was very tan, looking as though he'd spent his entire life out in the hot desert sun, he was completely bald, and he wore no shirt, only a linen kilt, simple sandals made from reeds, and an armband made of shining gold. From the stands, there came loud cheers for him.

A soft wind ruffled Mark's hair, and he shivered. Then, a bit self-consciously, looked down at himself. Mark was shocked to find that he was dressed in a similar fashion, only his kilt, rather than being white linen, was dyed black, as if to signify that he was the antagonist in the fight.

Mark glanced back up at Xena, and noticed that she seemed to be staring straight ahead, without emotion, and her mismatched eyes were glazed over. She appeared to be dressed in a Cleopatra costume, or at least the costume of some long-dead Egyptian queen, like Nefertiti. She wore a white linen dress, her long black hair had been straightened so much that it looked unnatural, and her face was caked with makeup.

Mark finally dragged his eyes away from Xena, and walked calmly towards the ring in the centre of the field, towards the other Champion.

"The Champion of the Sorcerer meets the Champion of the Prophet in mortal combat. The victor shall hold the rights to one-third of Alexander of Macedon's Neshamah!" More cheering ensued. "Begin!"

_Now I get it_, Mark thought, glancing back up at Xena, and raising his sword, light glinting off of the blue blade. _This is about Alexander. But what does Xena have to do with Alexander?_ Taking a deep breath in an effort to control the butterflies that had suddenly appeared in his stomach, Mark gave a long, wordless yell, and attacked.

* * *

"I know you're here!" Gabriel called into the darkness. "Come out where I can see you, Diablo!"

A high pitched burst of laughter echoed and reverberated around the cavern. "Name's not Diablo no more!" the voice replied in an irritating sing-songy tone.

Gabriel bit back a sigh. "What is it then, not-Diablo?" he asked loudly, trying to pinpoint the speaker.

"My name is now Felipe Rivera. I like petty anger, don't you? Won't you get angry, dear, dear brother Gabby?"

Gabriel took a deep breath. "No." he refused calmly. "Now please show yourself."

"You're no fun!" Said the voice, even as several torches lit themselves simultaneously, revealing a young man about the same age as Mark. His swarthy face was contorted into a childish pout, and his posture was similar to that of a marionette that lacked a puppetmaster: his arms dangled uselessly at his sides, his head lolled on his shoulders, and he shuffled forward one baby step at a time.

"Felipe, is it? What are you doing in Durango?"

The demon laughed again, making Felipe's slackened body shudder violently. "Isn't it obvious, Gabby? I'm playing with my toys."

"And that poor young man is your toy, is he?"

"Of course, big brother. All the mundanes are my toys... And I don't like to share." The demon's voice had once again taken on the sing-songy tone, and began skipping jerkily around the torchlit cavern.

"Let go of Alexander's Neshamah, and I might just leave you be."

"You're such a big liar, Gabby!" Laughed the demon. "And anyway, you won't be able to extract me from this boy. I'm the only thing that's keeping him alive, after all."

"Where is Alexander's Neshamah?" Gabriel asked, growing impatient.

"Ooh, maybe you do have a short temper after all!" The demon, Diablo, contorted Felipe's face into a gleeful grin. "You'll have to kill him to get at it. It's right here!" Diablo pointed Felipe's index finger straight at his heart. "Trapped in there, it is!"

Gabriel smiled grimly. "You've been away for far too long, Diablo. We have ways that you don't know about."

"Ways? What ways?" Diablo squawked.

"Well, for one, this. Go back to Hell, why don't you!"

Gabriel shut his eyes and muttered an exorcism in Enochian. Diablo shrieked, but soon was silenced. When he opened his eyes, Gabriel caught a glimpse of what looked like a black shadow vanishing down a corridor. Without a second to spare, Gabriel turned his attention to Felipe, who had collapsed on the stone floor of the cavern.

"Who are you?" he asked, his natural voice barely a croak, and veiled heavily by a Mexican accent..

"Gabriel," Gabriel answered. "You're Felipe, aren't you? Why did Diablo take possession of you?"

The corners of Felipe's mouth twitched slightly. "You're an angel, aren't you? It was my punishment, he said. For getting too close to my Xena. Has she had her baby yet?"

"Yes. She named him Alexei."

"Xena's special," Felipe croaked. "Most people were scared of her, but that was only because she was also Alexander almost half of the time. I wasn't afraid of Alexander."

"No, you weren't." Gabriel said soothingly, noticing the blood that was pooling from Felipe's back.

"He is a good person, that Alexander. Trapped though. But you're here to help him, aren't you?"

"I am here to help him."

Felipe smiled. "Then give me a knife. Quickly. I'm dying already."

Gabriel frowned, but produced a knife made from heavenly iron from his inner jacket pocket. "Here you are."

"Tell me, Gabriel. Will God forgive me?" Felipe asked laboriously.

"What are you about to do?" Gabriel returned, though he suspected that he already knew.

"You need my heart. I want you to take it, but I want to be the one to cut it out of myself."

Gabriel paused. "You're going to kill yourself, are you?"

Painfully, Felipe nodded. "I'm dying anyway, aren't I?" He asked, and without further ado, began to gouge his own heart out of his chest, while all Gabriel could do was to look on in faint horror.

* * *

Holly squinted in the bright sunlight. She sneezed a couple of times, and then looked up as a large shadow passed over her. An enormous bird, trailing black feathers, flew high above her, something clutched in its talons.

Holly, deciding that the bird was too high up to see properly from this distance, conjured a spyglass, which she quickly applied to her left eye, just in time to catch a glimpse of a small, writhing bundle of fabric that looked very much like... A baby!? But what did such a large bird have to do with such a tiny child?

Wasting no more time, Holly clambered after the huge bird, deciding that it looked very much like pictures of condors that she'd seen before in books. One of the fallen feathers that had fallen from the condor's primaries fluttered down, caught the wind, and smacked right into Holly's face. Holly shook her head, spitting out bits of feather, and had her memory jogged. Didn't the dream she'd had just the day before yesterday show her such feathers?

Certain that this was her trial, Holly redoubled her efforts to keep up with the condor, and was eventually brought to the side of a mountain. The huge condor circled the mountain a few times, and then vanished somewhere near the top.

Holly cursed her luck. How was she going to climb all that way? And even if she did somehow manage to climb up the mountain, how would she find the condor's nest?

A chime sounded from somewhere behind her, and a beam of pulsating blue light appeared, seeming to direct her to a certain spot on the plain rock face. Curious, and remembering what Nimrod had said that the strange hieroglyphs had meant, Holly trotted over to investigate. She was pleased, but hardly surprised, when she noticed that there was a doorway in the rock, made all but invisible by the brambles and undergrowth.  
Holly slipped through the small passageway, and into a much cooler chamber that held nothing but a twisting stone staircase.

"Hello!" Holly called up the staircase, not really hoping for a reply, and indeed, nothing but echoes came back.

Bracing herself, Holly began to climb.


	24. Chapter 23: Gathering the Soul Part 2

Chapter 23: Gathering the Soul Part 2

By the time he'd brought the other Champion to his knees, Mark was drenched with sweat. Mustering every bit of his remaining strength, Mark hit the other man over the head with the butt of his sword.

Almost instantly, the Champion of the Sorcerer fell over into the sand, and cheers erupted from the stands. Victorious, Mark raised his sword up and looked back at where Xena had been sitting. He was dismayed when he saw that she had vanished.

"Help!" Someone screamed, almost drowned out by the cheers. Mark whipped around, and saw Xena being dragged out onto the field by two masked executioners. Her eyes were no longer glazed over, and she seemed to know exactly what was going on.

"Ladies and gentlemen, here we have the Heir of Alexander! Give her a round of applause, everyone!"

Applause and cheers erupted from the stands again, and Xena struggled even more to get free from her captors.

"Champion of the Prophet, the prize is yours!" The two hooded men threw Xena into the dust at Mark's feet, and left. Mark glanced over his shoulder at the shadowy announcer, and then knelt down to help Xena up.

"Are you okay?" He asked quietly. Xena, who had been breathing in short, shaky bursts, looked up at the sound of his voice.

"Aren't you that guy from the diner?" she asked, her eyes wide. "Mark?"

Mark nodded, and smiled reassuringly at Xena. "I am indeed. So, are you okay?"

"Yeah." Xena said, still shakily, and allowed Mark to help her to her feet. "Thanks. How do we get out of here?"

"Let's find out." Mark grinned at her, grabbing her by the hand, and the two took off down the field, towards an open door at the opposite end.

* * *

Gabriel picked up the bloody heart with obvious disgust. He disliked having anything to do with someone's organs, but sometimes it was unavoidable. Searching, Gabriel turned the heart over and over in his hands, trying to figure out which part of it contained a fragment of Alexander's Neshamah.

Finally, a tiny spark stuck in one of the many crevasses of the heart caught his attention, and Gabriel reached for it, pulling it out until it was once again a merry little fire. This fire morphed into the faint outline of a man.

"Thank you, Gabriel." Said the outline. "I hope that poor Felipe will be rewarded for his heroic efforts."

"I can't say that he will or will not. It's not up to me, Alexander." Gabriel told the outline. The outline nodded.

"Let's go find the other two parts of me. The sooner we get out of here, the better."

Dropping the heart to the floor where it landed with a sickening squelch, Gabriel led the way down the same tunnel that the shadow of Diablo had vanished into.

Turning a corner, he almost crashed straight into Mark and Xena.

"Gabriel!" Mark shouted, his voice echoing off of the walls in the tunnel. Mark squinted in mock suspicion at Gabriel's bloody hands and bloodstained clothes. "What have you been up to?"

Gabriel shrugged. "I found one-third of Alexander's soul." he replied, as if that explained everything.

"Oh. So did I. Gabriel, this is Xena, the Heir of Alexander. Xena, this is Gabriel the archangel."

Xena began to splutter. "Wh-wh-what?! Are you insane?"

Calmly, Mark shook his head. "Nope, I'm telling the truth. Now, do you want to get out of here, or are you going to waste time being silly?"

Xena's mouth snapped shut, and her pale face flushed pink in the torchlight.

"He's right, Xena. Now is the time to move." Said the faint outline of Alexander the Great. Xena's eyes widened, and she looked as though she was ready to scream. Fearfully, she backed away until she ran into the wall. She opened her mouth, but instead of a shriek coming out, a thin stream of blue flame exited, swirled around the bluish outline.

"It's you," she whispered, eyes wide.

"Yes, Xena. Let's keep moving, shall we?" Slowly, Alexander's features came into focus, until he looked like a hazy ghost.

"Okay." Xena said quietly, and followed the ghost, the angel, and Mark down the tunnel, back the way Gabriel had come.

* * *

By the time she mounted the last few steps of the spiral staircase, Holly felt dizzy. It was the effect of going in circles for thousands of steps, following the little blue beam of light. She was hardly surprised when, before she'd gone terribly far, she heard the high chirps of baby birds. Steeling herself, Holly crept onwards, as quietly as she could manage. She turned a corner, and sunlight hit her like a slap, filtering through a crack in the rocks. There was Alexei, lying among twigs and leaves that were woven into a huge bird's nest. Towering over him were several large, ugly, bald-headed condor chicks. They appeared to be having some sort of disagreement, and busily pecking viciously at each other. Holly looked back at Alexei, who was somehow managing to sleep through all the racket, and back to the condors, trying to decide what to do.

"MADECASSEE," she whispered. Slowly, she began to vanish, beginning with her feet, until all that was left were a pair of brown eyes which also soon faded. Quietly, she crept towards the bickering birds, squeezed herself though the crack, and towards the sleeping Alexei. Praying that her knees didn't creak, she knelt down, holding her breath, and picked Alexei up causing him to vanish as well and not noticing the red silk scarf fluttering to the ground as Alexei let go of it.

Again hoping that her knees didn't creak and give her away, Holly stood slowly up and began creeping back to the safety of the crack that led back to the stairwell. About halfway there, Alexei woke up and began to fuss, discovering that his new toy had been taken away. Dreading what she would see, Holly looked over her shoulder to see that all six of the beady eyes of the condor chicks were fixed upon her.

She quickened her pace, dashing for safety, when the birds began to shuffle towards her as one. She just managed to squeeze through the crack again, when Alexei began to cry in earnest. Holly glanced once again over her shoulder, at the abandoned hijab, sighed, and created an identical one, which Alexei latched onto gratefully.

A thin stream of blue flame began to drip from Alexei's mouth (along with quite a bit of drool,) and collected near the floor to form a cheery little fire. The fire headed in the direction of the stairwell, and Holly, curious, followed it, leaving the other pulsating light behind.

Down she went, as quickly as she could manage while carrying Alexei, until she had finally reached the bottom step. The fire paused, not at the exit, but at another stone face, which slid open with a loud scraping sound. On the other side, looking a bit cowed, were none other than Gabriel, Mark, Xena, and the blurred figure of Alexander the Great himself.

Holly's blue flame moved quickly to rejoin its master, and swirled about Alexander's somewhat stout figure, and he became clearer, until finally he became a perfect blue ghost, exactly as Adam Coomes had been.

"That's better!" Alexander said, pleased, and peered in Holly's general direction. "Where is the Prophet?" he asked, sounding perturbed.

Holly, however, was much too preoccupied with Mark's current appearance. She looked her brother up and down a few times, taking in the kilt, sandals, golden jewelry and shirtlessness of him. Then she promptly burst into loud laughter.

"Eep!" Xena said, instinctively ducking behind Mark, which only made Holly laugh harder.

Mark frowned. "Holly," he said, very annoyed. "If there's something you want to say, just say it, will you? And take that invisibility whatsit off of yourself. It's disturbing to hear laughter from nowhere."

By now, Holly was struggling to hold onto Alexei, who had begun to giggle with delight, and eventually Holly was able to gasp out her focus word and become visible again.

Xena, looking a little relieved, but still unnerved, stepped forward and reclaimed her son from Holly's shaking grasp.

"What's so funny?" Gabriel asked, nonplussed. All Holly could do was point a shaking finger at Mark. Mark frowned darkly.

"This wasn't my idea, kiddo." he informed her sternly. "Now pull yourself together. We need to be moving on."

Gabriel, still mystified by Holly's mirth, shook his head. "Oh, we're not going anywhere. Not until the lion has been taken care of."

"What?! You mean we can't leave yet?" Holly was instantly sobered.

"No we can't. Nor can we do anything until it's gone. I'm afraid we're stuck until someone, or to be more specific, a pair of someones destroys that lion for good."

"Actually, that's not technically true, my good angel. You five can leave, but I can't. I'm the only one bound by the curse." Alexander spoke up, his calm eyes betraying a hint of panic.

"We'll make sure you get out, Alexander. I promise." Holly nodded kindly at the ghost.

"Very handsome of you to say so, young djinn. I take back what I said before."

"What do you mean?" Holly asked.

"Didn't I say something rude to you?"

"Nope."

"Oh, then I must have been thinking it instead. In any case, I still apologise for my behaviour."

"All's forgiven. See you later, maybe."

"For your sake, I hope not soon. Goodbye, all of you."


	25. Chapter 24:A Confrontation in the Desert

Chapter 24: A Confrontation in the Desert

"So why are we back out here in the middle of nowhere?" Cas asked Nimrod curiously. Nimrod didn't answer immediately, scanning the desert sky as though looking for something.

"We have to talk to someone. Luckily, I thought to phone ahead."

"When did you make a phone call?" Cas inquired. As far as he recalled, Nimrod hadn't had time to make any such phone call without Cas having known.

Much to Cas's annoyance, Nimrod didn't answer. Instead, he merely checked his gold watch and tapped his foot on the sand impatiently.

"Who are we even waiting for?" Cas tried.

Still Nimrod didn't answer, but this time he didn't have to, because a second later, none other than Azazel, Dimme, and Bart came down from the sky and landed directly in front of the two good djinn.

"As always, Nimrod, you figure things out a little bit later than you should, but I shan't hold that against you. It's not entirely your fault that you chose the wrong side of things."

Nimrod regarded Azazel with cold antipathy. "I could say the same about you, Azazel. But I didn't go to all of that trouble to contact you just to exchange insults with you."

"And Castiel," Azazel went on, completely ignoring Nimrod now, "how lovely to see you again. I expect that you still haven't changed your mind about joining me?"

"Only as much as I changed my mind about getting a twitter," Cas replied sweetly, a fake smile pasted onto his face.

"I see," said Azazel. "Well, when you change your mind, you'll be following me, I'm sure. In any case, Nimrod, why_ did_ you drag me all the way out here? I'm a very busy djinn, as you well know."

"Yes, busy causing the destruction of us all. I know you're recruiting demons to help you start a war, Azazel. What I want to know is why, and what Alexander has to do with any of it."

Azazel crossed his arms calmly. "That's for me to know and you to find out, Nimrod. But I suppose that we can arrange a bit of an information exchange. If you tell me which of these two idiots," He jerked his head back to indicate Bart and Dimme, "tipped you off to my plan, I'll tell you why I need Alexander."

Cas cocked his head to one side, examining his brother's somewhat egotistical countenance, and thinking hard. What was it again that Alexander the Great had been? A conqueror, surely. He'd forged himself an empire...

Cas's thoughts were interrupted by Bart stepping forward. "I told 'em. I figured I could get some info from the other side by playing the double agent, but nope, you just had to go and ruin it for yourself."

Cas nodded. "It's true that Bart's been helping us," He said, wondering why Bart was bothering to cover Dimme's tracks, and wondering if it had anything to do with Bart and Dimme's past together. "He told me that you've been searching the spirit world for Alexander. And I bet I know why."

All Bart had previously told Cas began to float its way to the surface of his mind_. ...All the info I've gathered was all to do with finding his 'missing link' and searching the spirit world...They were talking about something having to do with what Azazel called 'the most powerful weapon on Earth'..._ Cas looked directly at Bart, realizing that he had been telling the truth, or at least part of it, all this time.

"Oh, do you now?" Azazel asked, a cruel smile playing across his face. "Tell me then, why I'm looking for Alexander the Great."

"All right, then." Said Cas, a tiny tremor sneaking its way into his voice. "I will. You want Alexander to lead your army of demons, or else help you with battle tactics- because everyone knows that Alexander the Great was one of the greatest tacticians that ever walked the Earth."

Azazel lifted his chin in the air. "I must say, I'm rather impressed, Castiel. Now I'd like you to tell me why Jirjis was talking to you yesterday. I know he did, so don't try to play coy with me."

Now it was Cas's turn to smile. He had to admit, the feeling of having information to Lord over Azazel was a rather enjoyable one. "Oh, I don't think I will, Azazel. In any case, he wasn't making much sense. Kept asking me to find a hole in the ground."

"Oh, but of course. There's only one thing of value out here, and it belongs to me." Dimme finally spoke up.

Azazel turned to look at her. "And just what would that be, Mother?" he asked curiously.

Dimme looked as though she was about to answer, but was interrupted by a familiar rumbling from beneath their feet, shaking the earth beneath their feet.

"Oh, great." Cas muttered to himself, as everyone else began (in their own ways) to panic.

Unlike the first time he'd encountered the great ghostly cat, however, Cas was now prepared, somewhat, at least, for the reappearance of Alexander's Lion.

While the lion was busily roaring and singling out Azazel, Cas was busy working on a strategy to destroy the evil guardian once and for all. He focused every fiber of his being on that strange glowing that he'd done before, first to repel his demonic father, and then to drive off the lion the first time.

It took quite awhile, but eventually he began to feel the sensation that he was covered in goosebumps. His body head fluctuated in between normal djinn temperature (101.6 degrees fahrenheit,) and something far, far colder, but brighter. (94.2 degrees fahrenheit, to be precise, which is the body temperature of angels and *major* demons alike.)

Azazel, meanwhile, seemed to be trying to do something very similar, for he, too, was concentrating so hard that beads of sweat were dripping down his forehead.

Nimrod was the only one to notice Bart put his hand around Dimme's waist, mutter his focus word, and vanish over the horizon using his whirlwind.

Finally, Cas managed to make the goosebumps burst, and he sent a jet of white light that glowed with such a fierce intensity that it forced both Nimrod and Azazel to look away.

At exactly the same moment, Azazel managed to succeed in his endeavor, and an inky black shadow seemed to fall around him, and a tendril of shadow inched its way forwards from the circle, looking like the shadow cast by a giant squid.

Both projectiles hit the lion at exactly the same time, with exactly the same velocity, with exactly the same intent. If Cas had thought that the Lion's earlier defeat had been exciting, then this time it must have been downright astounding!

Where before the Lion had faded slowly, this time it exploded into thousands of tiny, many-faceted blue pieces of lion ghost that flew apart at first, but soon imploded and condensed until it was nothing more than a tiny, faint blue light that was quickly snuffed out altogether.

Cas's head pounded, and he felt much weakened, and he fell to his knees on the sand, even as he was watching this fantastic sight. He didn't notice, but Azazel was stumbling a little as well.

Slowly, in the same spot, another soft blue light rose up from beneath the golden sands, twisting and undulating upwards, spreading until it became as wide as a man, then it split into three separate flames, each continuing to grow and shape until the ghostly shapes of three men were discernable.

"Alexander," Azazel breathed.

"That is who I am," said the curly-haired man in the middle, who was a darker blue than either of the others.

"But who are you, sonny djinn?" Asked the ghost to the right in an upper-class English accent, his face partially obscured by a plumed helmet.

"I'll tell you who he is," said the third ghost, a young American man dressed in explorer's khaki and heavy-duty work boots. "He's the limey who killed me!"

Nimrod cleared his throat. "Allow me to introduce Azazel Teer, gentlemen. I am Nimrod Godwin, and this young man here is Cas Malone."

Alexander nodded politely at each of them in turn, though he seemed to be reserving his judgement.

"I'm Henry Peters." the young man introduced himself, squinting hard at Nimrod and Cas. "And come to think of it, haven't I met you two before as well?"

"Yes, I believe so, though you looked quite a bit older than you presently appear."

"Oh, right, you came with that nice girl who gave me a stick... Strange one, that girl. Vanished and then reappeared in seconds."

"Ah, you're referring to Holly Godwin, I assume?" Asked Alexander. Mr. Coomes beamed with pride.

"I brought her up, you know. And right proud I am of her, you can be sure." He nodded, taking his plumed helmet off, and still grinning.

Azazel frowned. "Yes, well..." he began, but was interrupted by Alexander.

"Yes, she helped me get a third of my soul back. A very good role model for other young djinn of her age. Showing kindness to an old ghost like me never goes amiss, nor does handing out money to beggars on the street."

"Holly Godwin was not the only djinn who helped you, Alexander." Azazel pointed out loudly, tersely.

Alexander spared him a glance that was dripping with indifferent ennui. "No, I suppose she wasn't. You and Cas over there did play important roles in setting me free. For that, I thank you."

"That's all? Just a simple 'thank you?' No reward for nearly getting myself killed for your sake?!" Azazel's face was turning redder by the second, and the frustration radiating from the Ifrit was palpable.

"Quit being selfish, Azzy." Cas said, getting to his feet and feeling slightly irritated with his brother for ruining the moment. "You ought to bear in mind what the book of Proverbs says: 'A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, and loving favour rather than silver and gold.' Proverbs 22:1."

Azazel sneered. "Quoting the Bible now, are we? You've fallen so far, Castiel. I'm disappointed."

Cas replied levelly. "Not as disappointed as I am in you, Azazel. Now go away before you embarrass yourself further."

"In any case, Azazel, I have no interest of aiding a war effort that will likely destroy my essense for good." Alexander chimed in primly.

Azazel cursed extensively, turned around to see that Bart and Dimme had vanished, cursed some more, and rode off in a cloud of dust and a huge huff. "I'll be back, Castiel, just you wait!" he called over his shoulder. "And when I am, you can bet I won't be as forgiving as this time!"

Cas shook his head and turned his attention back to the three ghosts and Nimrod. "Excuse my brother for being a complete and utter toad and idiot." he said calmly. Alexander, Mr. Coomes, and Henry Peters all waved it off as though it was nothing.

"I've seen bad blood between brothers before, Castiel, it's nothing new." said Alexander. "But you had best not let your guard down. A djinn like Azazel isn't likely to have neglected his plan B."

Cas and Nimrod nodded politely to the three ghosts, and they waved farewell.

"Until next time, Nimrod, Cas," said Mr. Coomes.

"Goodbye, good fellows," said Henry Peters.

"May luck be with you. I suspect you'll need it."

With Alexander's parting words, and one last wave, the three ghosts faded into nothingness, leaving Cas and Nimrod alone in the darkening desert.


	26. Epilogue: To London and Beyond

Epilogue: To London and Beyond!

"Holly! Where have you been?!" Cas threw his arms around his best friend the next morning when he saw her, sitting calmly on the patio of the Golden Lion, chatting with Ingrid as though nothing had happened.

"I've been to Durango, Cas." She said mysteriously once Cas had released her, and pulled out a small package wrapped in silvery foil. "Happy birthday, by the way. Hope you like it."

Cas smiled. It was so like Holly to remember his birthday, even though he himself had half-forgotten.

She'd made a big deal of it the previous year, insisting that she come and visit him at the Malone household, and give him the now-broken silver pocketwatch that he still treasured as one of his few belongings from what he now viewed as 'his life before.'

"Well open it!" She pushed enthusiastically. Grinning in mock anticipation, Cas carefully undid the tape and slid the small cardboard box out of the silver foil, opening that to reveal a pendant made of a strip of leather and a small piece of brilliant scarlet petrified wood.

"Thanks, Hol." Cas grinned and slipped the pendant around his neck.

Nimrod came out onto the patio, yawning largely. "Oh, Cas, is it your birthday today? I'm sorry, it must have slipped my mind. I see you're back, Holly. Good, good." Nimrod interrupted himself with another yawn. "I'm sorry I'm so tired, its just that my cell phone wouldn't stop ringing. I had to turn it off. Anyway, happy birthday, Cas. I do have another surprise for you both... er, where's Mark?"

Holly shrugged. "Upstairs still, I expect. Want me to go fetch him?"

Nimrod shook his head. "No, that won't be necessary until later. We're headed to New York for Christmas."

Both Holly and Cas gasped in delight. New York! They hadn't visited New York since summer, nor had they been in touch with the Gaunts at all!

"Really?" Holly was the first to recover, and she leapt to her feet, itching to begin packing that very instant.

When Nimrod nodded, she grinned even more broadly, and went immediately to her room to gather up her things.

Cas lagged behind a little, sensing that Nimrod wished to speak with him. Even as he opened his mouth to speak, Cas forgot what he was going to say, because a tiny object, probably no larger than a cough drop, was hurtling up his esophagus. Cas choked, and wretched until the object was finally expelled.

"Djinnternal mail," muttered Nimrod, examining the lozenge-shaped golden capsule. "But what is it? More importantly, who is it from?"

"What's djinnternal mail?" Cas asked, also looking with fascination at the object he'd just coughed up.

Impatiently, Nimrod explained what djinnternal mail was, and began poking at the capsule with the end of a fork. After the third prod, the golden capsule burst open on an invisible hinge, almost like a blooming flower, and a paper that had been concealed inside unfurled until Cas and Nimrod could read the crabby, spiked handwriting on it.

"21 December 2012. . Happy birthday, Castiel. It begins. 12/21/12. December 21, 2012."

"Well this is ominous," said Nimrod, and tucked the paper and the capsule into his pocket without another word.

The transition from the arid desert climate of Alexandria to the near-arctic conditions of New York in winter was not an entirely welcome one for Holly and Cas, even if they did get to visit the Gaunts once again.

Christmas and New Year's passed in a blur, and Cas and Holly reconnected with John and Philippa for the first time in months, which was good.

All too soon, however, it was time for Holly, Cas, Mark, and Nimrod to board a flight bound for London from New York's JFK airport.

Holly slept fitfully on the plane, receiving blurry snippets of something that she couldn't quite make out.

A calming lullaby echoed in her head until finally, Holly couldn't take it anymore, and stayed up reading her chapter book.

After what seemed like an eon, they had arrived at Heathrow airport, and Nimrod hailed a cab to take them home, as Groanin was (presumably) still on holiday.

The cab ride was done in relative silence, although Nimrod prattled on (somewhat nervously, it seemed to Cas) about this and that, until at last, they reached Number 7, Stanhope Terrace.

"I'll unlock the door, shall I?" Holly offered, and Nimrod tossed his house keys to his daughter, and she caught them easily, walking over to the front door while the others unloaded their luggage.

Before she could unlock the front door, however, it flew open to reveal a tall, very glamorous-looking dark-skinned woman.

"About time, Nimrod!" She said impatiently. "I've been waiting for you for weeks!"

Holly, Cas, and Nimrod turned, wide-eyed, to Nimrod, searching for an explanation, even as the cabbie drove off.

Nimrod sighed and polished his gold-rimmed spectacles. "Hello, Alexandra."

**Author's Note: Mwahahahahahah! I have left you with another cliffhanger! Don't worry, though, I'm beginning another one: It'll be called ****_Blessing of the Phoenix_**** or something similar... and I'll drag some new characters in, as well as make Alexandra a major character. She really deserves it, poor dear... See you later!**

**And thanks to sibunasiren10 and Violet Jenkins for the reviews :) buh-bye!**


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